[Slackbuilds-users] Very simple way of finding dependency

[Didier Spaier]

Le 13/09/2017 à 12:40, Sebastian Arcus a écrit :
> I know SBo and Slackware doesn't have a system in place to track
> dependencies - and most of the time that suits me just fine. However,
> on occasion, I stumble over a piece of SBo software installed on my
> machine - such as a library, and I would like to know why is it there
> - which package needs it. I was thinking that, if when using the
> search field on SBo website, it would also search through the .info
> and README files of packages, I could easily get a list of packages
> which depend on or use the library - and spot if one of them is
> something that I use or have installed. It would be crude, but I think
>  it would work.

Why bother? Just leave this package alone, or if you are really curious,
remove it and see what happens.

Also, if you upgrade a package, it is possible that it doesn't need a
dependency any more.

Furthermore, as others have said, you would need to check the optional
dependencies.

In my opinion the gain in disk space removing a package is not often
worth the time you will spend to find out if you can safely remove it,
unless you always keep notes of why you installed a package, but even
then, you could install another package that needs it later, without
paying attention. 

This doesn't apply to leaf packages, of course.