Hi Greg.
I use apt-get and dselect for package management..one
reason aptitude
wanted to remove packages I did not want removed..sound kind of like your
situation.
Yesterday I used aptitude in a virtual machine and have to reinstall gimp and
freecad
If you do not mind trying apt-get and seeing if it
behaves more to you
wants. I never figured out why apt-get & aptitude differ in this regard.
Today on a real machine I used apt-get and only g++ (plus its dependencies)
have been installed, nothing to reinstall.
Thanks for the hint.
Rolf