Re: [suggestion] :confusing dselect urge for agressive upgrade
Thanks for your answer, Colin.
Colin Watson wrote:
>
[... dselect updating automatically ...]
> 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.
>
I get the point and agree with you. Maybe security packages could get a
special treatment. (See below.)
[... installed packages on hold by default ...]
>
> 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.
>
Bad point for me. Should have read the doc. (But apparently lots of
users directly use 'apt --get-selection > foo ; $EDITOR <M-x
query-replace 'install' 'hold'> foo ; --set-selection < foo' to do the
same thing.)
In conclusion, I agree that all I want to do can be easily done in
dselect.
Yet I believe that novice users would very much appreciate such macro
actions like "Upgrade the whole thing" or "Upgrade security" or "Select
a few packages only", to ease the path between the user's wish and
dselect's behavior. At the time being, dselect seems to upset quite a
few people, because though dselect's actions are quite logical, users
don't understand the rationale behind them -- e.g. security in the above case).
For instance I chose *not* to download the 60MB of archive dselect had
pick up for me, but now that I now they might be security related (it
might well also be that is was not the stable dist), I may try to find a
practical way to get them.
It might sound silly, but people which are not expert on linux can
really have hard times at the beginning on such stupid stumbling stones.
And I'm sure will all want to ease novices' way to linux. [Though you
certainly don't stay novice for a long time when you use linux ... ;)
Anyway even though: Congratulations for the work done so far, dselect /
dpkg / apt are really impressive !
Francois
--
Francois Taiani LAAS-CNRS (http://www.laas.fr)
Ph.D. Student Dependable Computing
http://www.laas.fr/~ftaiani and Fault Tolerance
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