pkgprune - Filter a Packages file
Usage: pkgprune Packages > Packages.filtered
Filters a Debian Packages file by removing either a list of packages (and
their reverse dependencies) or the packages that have given tags.
Dependencies in the filtered Packages file will still be satisfied.
Available via:
wget http://people.debian.org/~enrico/2007-08/pkgprune/pkgprune
or:
hg clone static-http://people.debian.org/~enrico/2007-08/pkgprune
The top of the script has a configuration section:
#
# Configuration
#
# Set of packages you don't want to have (the reverse dependencies will be
# removed as far as it's possible)
blacklist_pkgs = set(['gconf2'])
# List of sets of tags; the packages whose tag sets contain one of these tag
# sets will be removed
blacklist_tags = [ set(['implemented-in::php']) ]
Edit that before running the script. The idea is to be able to configure a
system to run such a script after apt-get update, both to make dpkg faster on
slow arches and to reduce the amount of packages displayed by an interface.