
orphan-search DIRECTORY...

This operation expects a list of directories in your file system. It will
attempt to find files that do not belong to any package in those directories
(called "orphan files"). It is a rarely-run operation, mainly useful to keep
the system clean if you intend to run it without reinstallations for long
periods of time. For example, it could be useful for people who keep running
the -current branch for years.

It's very important to note that it takes some time to find actual orphan
files, and that the results tend to have a lot of false positives, depending on
the directory. For example, many files in /etc do not actually belong to any
package but cannot be removed at all, the most clear example being /etc/fstab.
In other words, after running orphan-search you should not blindly remove every
file reported by the program, and should instead check and double-check each
file to detect if it could be removed or not.

Also see: missing-search, broken-symlinks.

