Re: [suggestion] :confusing dselect urge for agressive upgrade
On Tue, Jul 31, 2001 at 10:04:21AM +0200, Francois Taiani wrote:
> dselect has the default behavior that successfully installed packages
> are marked as 'installed ok install' in the package status file. That
> means, as far as I could infer, something like :
>
> "package installed, do upgrade without question if newer version found"
>
> and this has the consequence, that after a standard CD ROM install, the
> first time you connect to a ftp distribution site, dselect spontaneously
> offers you to download nty *Megabytes* of archives, even if you've only
> selected a few new small packages. (Which is very confusing the first
> time, and can be very tedious with a small modem line.)
Yes - on the other hand, if you're tracking the stable distribution,
this is only going to be security updates. So this is likely to remain
as the default behaviour, as we really want people to get security
updates automatically where available.
> Why not have dselect set a package on 'installed ok hold' by default
> after installation, and add 2 new entries in the dselect menu to
> globally unhold / hold the complete set of installed packages.
These actions are actually there already. Put the cursor on the line
saying "Updated packages (newer version is available)" and press '='.
This will put all such packages on hold. If you like, you can do the
same for "Up to date installed packages". You can press '+' on the same
lines to select them for installation again.
> I've seen that a replacement for dselect is underway as deity. Maybe
> this behavior has been considered for it, if not I would greatly
> apprciate it.
Much of the work that started out being called "deity" is now in apt
(although there is indeed a partly finished GUI tool called deity), and
you can use 'apt-get install <package-name>' to upgrade individual
packages without having the rest of your system automatically upgraded
unnecessarily.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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