Depinstall is a script for ubuntu

Suppose you want to build a project and you want to install build dependencies just for now to build, not forever. Use this script and these will be removed with the next (sudo)apt autoremove.

I use it for build dependencies, when I want to build a project and not return to it (something from github or from source). If it's a long time project, I would want to clean up automatically installed packages and not reinstall my build dependencies, so this wouldn't be convenient. I'd keep them marked as manually installed.

Installation

Clone this repository somewhere you'll keep it. And then run from the directory of the repository

if [ -f ./depinstall ]; then
  echo "export PATH=\"\$PATH:$(pwd)\"" >> ~/.bashrc
  echo "source \"$(pwd)/depinstall-completion.bash\"" >> ~/.bashrc
fi

Just copy this and paste into the terminal, press Enter.

Sometimes packages you install may be "suggested" by other packages you already have in your system. Then apt autoremove won't think they are unused. Because they are used, for some additional functionality in other programs. I recommend to use depremove for uninstallation, it should handle these cases.

Warning: you should not run two instances of depinstall/depremove at the same time from different users. It's not supported. The code of depinstall and depremove assumes there's other depinstalls, depremoves and apt jobs, while it's working.

Regarding apt jobs, it's sufficient that there are no apt-get jobs until installation/uninstallation stage. If there's an apt job at these points, apt-get will just fail to take the lock. And there will be no changes to your computer environment.