I catch myself sometimes needing to temporarily install a package on a server (e.g. Firefox) but when I do it installs a ton of dependencies only needed for this one temporary package.
# yum install firefox ... Resolving Dependencies --> Finished Dependency Resolution Dependencies Resolved ... Transaction Summary ================================================================================================================================================================================ Install 1 Package (+47 Dependent packages)
So, then when I go to remove the temporary package, I now also need to remove all of the dependent packages that it just installed. That can be a pain to do manually.
Here's a method I use to make this a bit simpler:
bash
TIMESTAMP=`tail -1 /var/log/yum.log | awk -F: '{ print $1 ":" $2 }' | sed s'/.$//'`
yum remove `grep $TIMESTAMP /var/log/yum.log | awk '{ print $5 }' | sed 's/\-[0-9].*$//g' | sed 's/^[0-9]://g'`
I'm guessing that perhaps YUM has an easier way to do this natively, but for now this approach is better than doing the removals manually.