Orphans, what's with the orphans

[BusinessOrc]

Orphans, can someone explain these to me? How do these come about.

Below is my output of pamac list -o what a mess.
I’ve been through these and marked some as explicitly installed but many of these, I have no clue how they got to be here and I’m kinda scared to remove them since they all say they were installed as a dependency (but no longer I suppose).
Most concerning is linux54-r8168 and lib32-cracklib

dotnet-sdk                3.1.8.sdk108-1  community  149.9 MB
gperf                     3.1-3           extra      239.2 kB
gradle                    6.6.1-2         community  116.4 MB
js52                      52.9.0-4        extra      53.1 MB
js60                      60.9.0-2        extra      58.1 MB
kvantum-theme-matcha      20190810-1      community  2.4 MB
lib32-cracklib            2.9.7-1         multilib   47.1 kB
lib32-libaio              0.3.112-1       multilib   13.3 kB
lib32-libcroco            0.6.13-1        multilib   276.1 kB
lib32-libdbusmenu-gtk2    16.04.0-4       multilib   83.5 kB
lib32-libidn              1.36-1          multilib   206.9 kB
lib32-libindicator-gtk2   12.10.1-8       multilib   76.7 kB
lib32-nvidia-cg-toolkit   3.1-7           multilib   12.3 MB
lib32-soundtouch          2.1.2-1         multilib   96.3 kB
lib32-wxgtk2              3.0.5.1-1                  19.0 MB
libtiger                  0.3.4-6         extra      60.4 kB
libxfce4ui-gtk3           2019.08.15-1    extra      4.1 kB
libxfce4util-gtk3         2019.08.15-1    extra      4.1 kB
libxxf86dga               1.1.5-1.1       extra      42.2 kB
libxxf86misc              1.0.4-1.1       community  22.4 kB
linux54-r8168             8.048.03-28     extra      171.3 kB
lld                       10.0.1-2        extra      19.2 MB
lv2                       1.18.0-1        community  3.4 MB
mercurial                 5.5.1-1         extra      26.2 MB
meson                     0.55.3-1        extra      6.4 MB
mozilla-common            1.4-6           extra      100 bytes
mypaint-brushes           2.0.2-1         extra      3.0 MB
nasm                      2.15.05-1       extra      3.3 MB
png++                     0.2.10-2        community  3.7 MB
python-attrs              20.2.0-1        extra      375.4 kB
python-coverage           5.2.1-1         community  1.3 MB
python-importlib-metadata 1.6.1-1         community  199.3 kB
python-mako               1.1.3-1         extra      715.8 kB
python-mock               3.0.5-3         community  224.9 kB
python-more-itertools     8.5.0-1         community  279.7 kB
python-pytoml             0.1.21-4        community  57.8 kB
python-scandir            1.10.0-3        AUR        91.2 kB
python-setuptools-scm     4.1.2-1         community  116.4 kB
python2-attrs             20.2.0-1        extra      402.6 kB
python2-coverage          5.2.1-1         community  1.5 MB
python2-css-parser        1.0.4-3                    2.0 MB
python2-dateutil          2.8.1-3         community  905.8 kB
python2-dbus              1.2.16-1        extra      599.6 kB
python2-dnspython         1.16.0-3        community  1.5 MB
python2-feedparser        5.2.1-6         extra      437.0 kB
python2-gobject           3.36.1-1        extra      1.3 MB
python2-html2text         2019.8.11-4                104.9 kB
python2-ipaddress         1.0.23-2        extra      234.7 kB
python2-markdown          3.1.1-5                    514.7 kB
python2-mechanize         1:0.4.5-1                  1.1 MB
python2-mock              3.0.5-3         community  249.5 kB
python2-msgpack           0.6.2-4         community  274.6 kB
python2-netifaces         0.10.9-3                   40.7 kB
python2-nose              1.3.7-7         extra      971.8 kB
python2-pillow            6.2.1-3         community  3.1 MB
python2-psutil            5.7.2-1         community  2.4 MB
python2-pychm             0.8.6-1                    99.8 kB
python2-pygments          2.5.2-2         community  9.6 MB
python2-pyqtwebengine     5.15.0-2                   630.9 kB
python2-regex             2020.7.14-1                1.7 MB
python2-scandir           1.10.0-3        community  99.4 kB
python2-unrardll          0.1.4-2                    59.3 kB
quilt                     0.66-2          community  655.5 kB
rapidjson                 1.1.0-5         community  654.6 kB
sndio                     1.7.0-1         community  285.3 kB
vala                      0.48.10-1       extra      13.8 MB
valgrind                  3.16.1-1        extra      337.3 MB
xcursor-breeze            5.11.5-1        community  5.5 MB
xorgproto-transfer        2019.12-1       extra      0 bytes
yarn                      1.22.5-1        community  5.3 MB
yasm                      1.3.0-4         extra      4.6 MB

Cheers

[Aragorn]

I don’t recognize all of those packages, but I do recognize many of them, and I don’t know why they are listed as orphans, but many of them are essential. Some may also have been pulled in as build-time dependencies by installing AUR packages.

If I were you, I’d simply leave them all as they are. It won’t harm your system, while if you were to remove them, it very well might.

[BusinessOrc]

Yup I think you’re right on all counts there. I’m not hurting on disk space but it’s triggering my compulsion a little heh.

I’m not sure why pamac doesn’t clear build time dependencies after the fact?
I’m also not sure what dictates whether packages are flagged as orphans like this.

[Aragorn]

@BusinessOrc

I’m not sure why pamac doesn’t clear build time dependencies after the fact?

Just in case they might be needed as build-time dependencies for something else from the AUR.

[Yochanan]

@Aragorn

many of them are essential

…for building, yes. Most are not runtime dependencies except some of the Python stuff that is probably left over from uninstalling other packages.

@BusinessOrc
Always review orphans after uninstalling packages, that way you know where they came from and can deal with them then. If you let them pile up like that, then it’s harder to remember where they came from.