Re: dependency hell + I want to keep deb installation files local ...

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On 2010-01-11 at 14:59:19 -0500, Albretch Mueller wrote:
>  I need to:
> ~
>  1) use apt-get and let it handle all dependencies and
> ~
>  2) somehow make apt-get leave all downloaded deb archives in the
> <local directory path> I have
> ~
>  How can you do that?

I feel inadequate to respond to this post, but perhaps I can
at least give a partial answer.  I hope someone else who is more
knowledgeable than I am in this area (which doesn't take much)
can give a better answer.  But here goes.

I usually use a combination of "dselect update" and
"aptitude -R full-upgrade" to perform an upgrade.  I prefer "dselect update"
over "apt-get update" or "aptitude update" because it downloads package
descriptions for all available packages, not just installed packages.
I can then use, for example,

dpkg-query -p xxx|less

where xxx is the name of any package, installed or not, and view its
description.  I use aptitude rather than apt-get to perform the upgrade
because it seems to be much better at resolving complex package
dependency relationships than apt-get.  The -R option prevents
recommended packages from being treated as prerequisites.  As for
keeping the downloaded package files, (.deb files), downloaded packages
are kept by default in /var/cache/apt/archives.  If you run

aptitude clean

before you start, then all the .deb files in /var/cache/apt/archives
will be from your most recent run and you can copy them wherever you
want afterwards.  There are two caveats, however.  (1) package files
read from CD or DVD are not downloaded to the package cache directory
first: they are installed directly from the CD or DVD.  Therefore,
make sure that your /etc/apt/sources.list file does not contain any
CD or DVD entries, and (2) You must make sure that the partition
which contains the package cache directory does not get low on disk
space during the upgrade.  Otherwise aptitude might attempt a partial
cleanup of the package cache during the upgrade.  In other words,
it might erase package files that have already been installed to
prevent a "disk full" condition.

I hope this helps.  Maybe someone else can provide you with a better
answer.