how to remove not needed packages

[gabor]

hi,

what i ideally want to do is:
emerge -whatever would look thru all the packages installed, and remove those which aren't dependencies of any package in the world file...

for example:
i do an 'emerge nautilus'.
it installs let's say 10 packages like gconf, gnome-vfs, and of course nautilus

then after some time i do an 'emerge unmerge nautilus'

but that only removes nautilus, and leaves gconf or gnome-vfs.
what i would like is that if no package in the world file needs gconf, then gconf should be removed ...


i was thinking about something like:

list all packages with epm -qa.
let's call this list A.

list all the world-needed packages with emerge -up --emptytree world. this is list B

now i think the unneeded packages are those which are in 'A minus B',
so those can be safely unmerged.

am i correct?

[fifo]

Does "emerge -p depclean" do what you want?

[gabor]

that's what i've been looking for
thanks

[LeChuck]

emerge depclean is cool for getting rid of those dependencies following an unemerge. But how would I remove and know which old files to remove after the unemerge? Example I emerged say courier-imap it creates say a directory in /etc maybe a few files in /etc/pam.d, some in /etc/init.d then a few somewhere else. But after unemerging it those files and directories are still there, how'd I know exactly which are safe to delete?

[EasyPzy]

I thought that unmerge deleted those files. It will however leave the directories if other progs are claiming them.

[LeChuck]

Yeah is gets rid of some directories like the ones in /usr for example but directories and files in /etc are nor removed even if other programs are not claiming them. Justing thinking, after lots of installs to try out new programs there'll be alot of files cluttering /etc/