Equivalent of apt autoremove in Python Alpine image

Question

I am trying to purge unused dependency to reduce image size.

This was addressed in Ubuntu images by

sudo-apt autoremove

Please help me with the command to be used in Alpine.

Answer 1

No, no equivalent in apk for alpine.

But, you really do not need it, because apk del will delete the unused dependency for you when you delete a package, it's totally different with apt. See this:

Remove a Package
Use del to remove a package (and dependencies that are no longer needed.)

Also you can have a try (vim for example):

/ # apk update
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/main/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
fetch http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/community/x86_64/APKINDEX.tar.gz
v3.10.1-40-g92381611d0 [http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/main]
v3.10.1-37-g530a544685 [http://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.10/community]
OK: 10335 distinct packages available

/ # apk add vim
(1/5) Installing lua5.3-libs (5.3.5-r2)
(2/5) Installing ncurses-terminfo-base (6.1_p20190518-r0)
(3/5) Installing ncurses-terminfo (6.1_p20190518-r0)
(4/5) Installing ncurses-libs (6.1_p20190518-r0)
(5/5) Installing vim (8.1.1365-r0)

/ # apk del vim
(1/5) Purging vim (8.1.1365-r0)
(2/5) Purging lua5.3-libs (5.3.5-r2)
(3/5) Purging ncurses-libs (6.1_p20190518-r0)
(4/5) Purging ncurses-terminfo (6.1_p20190518-r0)
(5/5) Purging ncurses-terminfo-base (6.1_p20190518-r0)
Executing busybox-1.30.1-r2.trigger
OK: 6 MiB in 14 packages

You can see in above, all package dependency when install vim will be purged when delete the package.

Answer 2

For alpine: apk del package-name, (apk is the package management utility for alipine) more information here: https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Alpine_Linux_package_management.

Also I suggest when creating your image (assuming you are starting FROM alpine), to use RUN apk add --no-cache <package> which allows you to not cache the index locally.

Here you can search for the packages which are available for alpine: https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages