brew autoremove and brew leaves --installed-as-dependency inconsistencies

[jcvar]

Output of brew config

HOMEBREW_VERSION: 4.4.21-62-g27a9032
ORIGIN: https://github.com/Homebrew/brew
HEAD: 27a903212da61972431818b7098b11f4670f75a9
Last commit: 2 days ago
Branch: master
Core tap JSON: 20 Feb 13:50 UTC
Core cask tap JSON: 20 Feb 13:50 UTC
HOMEBREW_PREFIX: /opt/homebrew
HOMEBREW_CASK_OPTS: []
HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS: 8
HOMEBREW_SORBET_RUNTIME: set
Homebrew Ruby: 3.3.7 => /opt/homebrew/Library/Homebrew/vendor/portable-ruby/3.3.7/bin/ruby
CPU: octa-core 64-bit arm_firestorm_icestorm
Clang: 15.0.0 build 1500
Git: 2.39.3 => /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/git
Curl: 8.7.1 => /usr/bin/curl
macOS: 14.6.1-arm64
CLT: 15.3.0.0.1.1708646388
Xcode: N/A
Rosetta 2: false

Output of brew doctor

Please note that these warnings are just used to help the Homebrew maintainers
with debugging if you file an issue. If everything you use Homebrew for is
working fine: please don't worry or file an issue; just ignore this. Thanks!

Warning: The following formulae have the same name as core formulae:
  hashicorp/tap/consul
  hashicorp/tap/consul-template
  hashicorp/tap/envconsul
  hashicorp/tap/levant
  hashicorp/tap/nomad
  hashicorp/tap/packer
  hashicorp/tap/terraform
  hashicorp/tap/terraform-ls
  hashicorp/tap/vault
  hashicorp/tap/waypoint
  cloudflare/cloudflare/cfssl
  cloudflare/cloudflare/curl
  cloudflare/cloudflare/nginx
  cloudflare/cloudflare/openconnect
You will need to use their full names throughout Homebrew.

Description of issue

Hello all,

While doing some cleanup of my installed formulas I encountered some odd behavior:

% brew leaves --installed-as-dependency
adwaita-icon-theme
automake
bison
go
gobject-introspection
libheif
libtool
meson
tesseract
% brew autoremove
%

I first noticed this after uninstalling czkawka which has adwaita-icon-theme as a dependency, and while it is not used by any other formula, it remains on my system. I can't easily tell where did the rest of lingering deps came from either.

How may I correct this and fully clean up my installed packages?
Can I see the original dependent of these formulas?

[gromgit]

What's the output of brew uses --recursive --installed go, for instance?

[jcvar]

Hello, and sorry for this late reply.

After updating and upgrading, I had the following outputs:

 ~ % brew leaves --installed-as-dependency
adwaita-icon-theme
automake
expat
go
libheif
libtool
[email protected]
tesseract
 ~ % brew autoremove
==> Autoremoving 2 unneeded formulae:
expat
[email protected]
Uninstalling /opt/homebrew/Cellar/[email protected]/3.13.5... (3,605 files, 66.9MB)
Uninstalling /opt/homebrew/Cellar/expat/2.7.1... (23 files, 684.4KB)
 ~ % brew leaves --installed-as-dependency
adwaita-icon-theme
automake
go
libheif
libtool
tesseract
 ~ % brew leaves --installed-as-dependency | xargs brew uses --recursive --installed
 ~ %

Before the update, the output for the last command was the same empty one. Let me know what else could be tried here.

[gromgit]

What's the output of the following:

brew ls --built-from-source
brew deps --union --include-build $(brew ls --built-from-source)

brew autoremove will not remove build dependencies of built-from-source formulae, to avoid reinstallation when these formulae have to be upgraded.