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?

Answer 1

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”?