Bug#1099766: Make autoremove consider alternative dependencies

Package: apt
Version: 2.9.31
Severity: wishlist


Hi,

this bug report was triggered by
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1099706#20

It appears, that when moving functionality from one package
(old_package) to another package (new_package) a lot of maintainers
update their dependencies like this (a/):

Depends/Recommends/Suggests: new_package | old_package

Now, if I install new_package, "apt autoremove" will not consider the
removal of old_package even though there is no reason anymore to keep
this package installed.

A case in point is dbus having a "Pre-Depends: base-files | usr-is-merged"
in trixie at this point.
This prevents the usr-is-merged package to be autoremoved.

While dropping this alternative dependency on usr-is-merged is currently
discussed, I think apt could handle such a situation in a more clever
way as this seems to be a more widespread issue.

Another recent example I can think of is the transition from policykit-1
to polkitd, where quite a few packages had a "polkitd | policykit-1"
dependency due to the recommendations suggested in e.g. b/

Thanks for considering,
Michael


a/ I assume this is done to make backports simpler
b/ https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1025595
   https://udd.debian.org/cgi-bin/bts-usertags.cgi?user=pkg-utopia-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org&tag=policykit-1