Removing GNOME Extensions app from Software actually removes the whole shell and gdm on Arch
I right-clicked on the GNOME Extensions app in the Activities overview, then I clicked on "Show Details" which brought me to its page in the GNOME Software app. Since I had the unofficial Extension Manager app from Flathub on my system, I thought that I didn't need GNOME Extensions anymore, so I clicked on "Remove" in Software, entered my password (the app was originally installed through pacman
), and uninstalled it.
Soon after I discovered that it actually removed, silently, both gdm
and gnome-shell
from my system, too.
This is the relevant part of pacman
's log file.
[2022-04-24T20:03:50+0200] [ALPM] transaction started
[2022-04-24T20:03:50+0200] [ALPM] removed gnome-shell-extension-hibernate (8-1)
[2022-04-24T20:03:50+0200] [PACKAGEKIT] removed gnome-shell-extension-hibernate (8-1)
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] removed gnome-shell-extensions (42.0-1)
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [PACKAGEKIT] removed gnome-shell-extensions (42.0-1)
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] removed gdm (42.0+r11+g4a52f026-1)
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [PACKAGEKIT] removed gdm (42.0+r11+g4a52f026-1)
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] removed gnome-shell (1:42.0-1)
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [PACKAGEKIT] removed gnome-shell (1:42.0-1)
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] transaction completed
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] running '30-systemd-daemon-reload.hook'...
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] running '30-systemd-udev-reload.hook'...
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] running '30-systemd-update.hook'...
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] running '90-packagekit-refresh.hook'...
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] running 'dbus-reload.hook'...
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] running 'glib-compile-schemas.hook'...
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] running 'gtk-update-icon-cache.hook'...
[2022-04-24T20:03:51+0200] [ALPM] running 'update-desktop-database.hook'...
I'm using version 42.0-1 of Software.
pacman
actually lets me remove gnome-shell-extensions
without affecting any other package.
I don't know what led Software to uninstall the other three packages, and anyway I believe that, in cases like this, the app should warn the user that some packages other than the one selected are going to be removed from the system.