Best way to remove unused config files & dependencies of removed packages?

Boggle247

say I remove a package with

 eopkg remove packagename

How can I now remove unused config files and unused dependencies of that package, and any other that I had uninstalled but forgot the name?

going forward, when I remove a package, how can I make sure that it also removes config files, data files, and dependencies that were only used for that package?

JoshStrobl

Packages will always remove their respective system-wide and vendor-provided config and data files, should they be shipped with the package. If they are not shipped with the package, then there is no way for the package manager to know such files are owned by or created by the package, and therefore config and data files generated by the package outside of its own contents (say like Firefox creating your profiles, cache, etc.) will remain. The only way to remove those files is to know they exist and deleting them manually.

In the case of removing dependencies of packages, we have an eopkg rmo (for remove orphaned packages) command that may remove dependencies if they are not used at all. Do note that this functionality is not entirely fleshed out, so it may not always work as expected. It's generally recommended that people still use the typical eopkg rm command. It may not always work as expected as it doesn't always account for pre-installed packages (that ship with the ISO) and eopkg's dependency graph isn't as sophisticated as we'd like (or strive to have with our future package manager, sol).

shiba

I don't know if there is another "best" way of removing unused dependencies of a package, but the following is my workaround to this issue. The steps are really unnecessary if compared to other package managers like apt and also very frustrating at times, but I like Solus so I compromised.
#1 First carefully note the dependencies of a package before even installing it.
#2 Export the history of ecopkg to a file. The command is eopkg history &> /home/shiba/Downloads/eopkg_history
Please replace the username with yours before executing it.
#3 Locate the operation id and note the dependencies it installed at the time.
#4 You can remove the dependencies one by one with sudo eopkg rm <packagename> or automate the task if you have to remove large set of dependencies at once.
I have a script that automatically remove all the depencencies given with the operation id of the eopkg history and the history logged file. Although it's not recommended as it could remove dependencies which are still being used by other packages.