Re: aptitude weirdness wrt upgrades and keeps

[Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>]

Norbert Preining wrote:
> In the current transition to gnome3 (or it seems) I press
>         U
> to update all packages, and then it suggests me to remove 30 or
> so packages.
> 
> I know this game, normally I have to press "." a few times to come
> to the solution that simply keeps some of the packages at the current
> level.
> 
> Well, normally it is a few times ".", no with gnome3, I stopped after
> 100 (hundred!) times pressing ".", and still aptitude does not suggest
> the simple solution to keep all those gnome3 packages on their current
> state. And every time I press "." it takes more and more time.
> 
> That cannot be the intended behaviour? Or is there any way to 
> teach aptitude that aptitude orders the solutions depending on
> the number of removals?

While I would certainly like to see aptitude making some smarter
decisions to begin with, you can reach a solution you like much more
quickly by using the "reject" and "approve" mechanism.  When you view
aptitude's solution, press 'r' on any action you want to reject (such as
removing a critical package), and 'a' on any action you know you want to
approve.  Then, press '.' again, and aptitude will come up with a
solution which definitely doesn't contain any of the rejected actions,
and which likely contains the approved actions.

Most of the time, this will quickly get you to a solution you like, or
to the "No more solutions" message (in the case of active breakage in
unstable, for which you might not like any solution other than "don't do
the upgrade you had originally intended").

- Josh Triplett