dependency explosions

[Miroslav Lachman]

Graham Menhennitt wrote on 2016/10/06 01:49:
> Sorry, I just read that UPDATING entry again. Cyrus is only provided to
> Dovecot if Postfix is present. I do not have Postfix present. So, I
> think that I do need to install Cyrus explicitly.
>
> So, back to my original question, why does "pkg autoremove" want to
> uninstall Cyrus when I explicitly installed it from the port?

pkg autoremove is working with pkg internal database. If you install 
some ports directly with command "pkg install SomePort", then this ports 
is nor marked as autoamtic. If some port is installed as depedency, then 
it is marked as automatic and if parent port is removed, then this 
automatic port can be deleted by "pkg autoremove"

You can use "pkg query" to check what is marked as automatic

pkg query '%a %n' | sort

You can change this settings by "pkg set" (see man pkg-query example)

EXAMPLES
      Change a package from automatic to non-automatic, which will prevent
      autoremove from removing it:
            % pkg set -A 0 perl-5.14



Why you need cyrus-sasl? Do you use some tools from this package or just 
some libs?
The Dovecot / Postfix case is that Dovecot have it's own internal SASL 
libs and Postfix from some version have internal support for Dovecots 
SASL and do not need to be build with Cyrus-SASL. But it is not related 
to you if you are not using Postfix.

Miroslav Lachman