How to determine if it is safe to remove folders suggested by pkgsrc update?

Question

When updating and upgrading pkgsrc and its packages using

sudo pkgin -y update
sudo pkgin -y full-upgrade
sudo pkgin -y autoremove

it suggested that some directories could be deleted:

downloading packages...
p5-Variable-Magic-0.62.tgz                                                          100%   42KB  41.6KB/s  41.6KB/s   00:00
p5-Role-Tiny-2.000006.tgz     
...                                                      
removing packages to be upgraded...
removing pkgin-0.9.4nb7...
===========================================================================
The following files are no longer being used by pkgin-0.9.4nb7,
and they can be removed if no other packages are using them:

    /opt/pkg/etc/pkgin/repositories.conf

===========================================================================
===========================================================================
The following directories are no longer being used by pkgin-0.9.4nb7,
and they can be removed if no other packages are using them:

    /opt/pkg/etc/pkgin
    /var/db/pkgin

===========================================================================
removing p5-PerlMagick-7.0.7.8nb1...
removing jasper-2.0.12...
...

My question is that how does one determine if no other packages are using the directories suggested above so they can be deteled? Simply ignoring this step and deleting them does not seem safe.

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 09 '18 at 23:00

Those messages are, for the most part, really just for the pedants who would worry and fuss over things that they no longer need and might get confused by, even when they don't cause any problems or get in the way of anything. (Such leftovers could possibly be of some concern if one was working on changing the package they were used by.)

In this particular case though the messages are actually misleading since they are about components used by pkgin itself and once pkgin upgrades itself they will in fact be in use again. One might even consider the appearance of those messages in this case to be a bug.

How to determine if it is safe to remove folders suggested by pkgsrc update?

1 Answers1