Package dependency question (on SuSE-10.2)

[Ben Scott]

On 2/19/07, Emon <emon at nerdshack.com> wrote:
> Here is my dilemma; I installed ekiga, which also installed about a
> dozen pkgs to resolve dependencies...
>
> Now I want to uninstall ekiga as well as the dozen pkgs it installed; is
> that possible??? if so... please tell me how.

  I'm unfamiliar with SuSE, but I would suggest going into whatever
tool you used to install ekiga, and looking around for an
uninstall/remove/erase option.  Perhaps that will also remove the
dependencies which got installed.

  Assuming that doesn't work out:

  On the off chance that SuSE is using "yum" these days, you can use:

	yum remove ekiga

and you're done.

  Now, I don't know if SuSE uses "yum".  I do know SuSE uses RPM.  So
I can also give you a generic RPM answer.  This is the "old fashioned"
way.  There's probably a better way, using "yum" or some other tool.
But anyway:

  RPM can tell you what something's dependencies are.  So:

	rpm -q --requires ekiga

should indicate all the dependencies.  Most of them will be files.
You can figure out what package "owns" a file with:

	rpm -qf /path/to/file

Once you've got a package name, you can remove it with:

	rpm --erase packagename

  If other things need that package, RPM will complain and tell you.
>From that, you can build up a list of packages which ekiga and its
dependencies depend on.  Anything that's needed by some *other*
package (which you want to keep), cross off your to-be-erased list.

-- Ben