clean, autoclean, and autoremove --- combining them is a good step?

Question

Will it be logical by means of Debian oriented logic to unite the three commands apt-get clean and apt-get autoclean, and apt-get autoremove into one single command that does all of them?

Solution

This completely depends on what you want to achieve, they are separate for a reason. But lets see what they actually do:

• apt/apt-get clean → cleans the packages and install script in /var/cache/apt/archives/
• apt/apt-get autoclean → cleans obsolete deb-packages, less than clean
• apt/apt-get autoremove → removes orphaned packages which are not longer needed from the system, but not purges them, use the --purge option together with the command for that.

So it is up to you to decide if you want to combine one of the first two with the last one and you can do this like below:

sudo apt autoremove && sudo apt clean

If thats what you really want to do, but now to code an extra command for it is pretty superfluous to be honest.

Further reading material:

• manpage for the apt command
• manpage for the apt-get command
• What is difference between the options “autoclean”, “autoremove” and “clean”?

Comments

[Chai T. Rex]

What "Debian oriented logic" are you referring to?

[Arcticooling]

Common logic in Debian systems like Debian and Ubuntu. The logic comes out in syntax, commands, terminology, etc.

[dessert]

I defined an alias for sudo bash -c "apt-get update && apt-get -y upgrade && apt-get -y autoremove && apt-get -y clean" and it serves me well. Caution: autoremove removes old kernel images.

[Arcticooling]

If I understood your answer correctly, you mean to say that sudo apt-get autoremove && sudo apt-get clean covers everything in sudo apt-get autoclean?

[Videonauth]

Exactly, autoclean only removes files out out the archives which can no longer be downloaded, clean nukes the archives completely.