Re: Proposal: dump dselect for console-apt

[Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@msu.edu>]

Matt Porter <mmporter@home.com> writes:

> * dselect has a poor user interface.
> * dselect causes strange dependency comflicts that apt does not. (case in
>   point, loads of internal potato powerpc testers have lots of different
>   dependency problems with perl4, dpkg-perl etc.)
> * console-apt is in good enough condition to follow the task-selection GUI for
>   power users.
> * console-apt's bugs can be squashed easily even though the maintainer isn't
>   responding to them.
> * Non developer Debian users *hate* dselect with a passion and avoid Debian
>   because of it.

Granted.  But AFAICT console-apt isn't yet ready for prime time:

* When it starts up, it gives no indication of how it is supposed to
  be used.  It doesn't even say how to get a list of keymappings.  I
  just had to guess that `?' would help me.

* It appears to be buggy in easy-to-trigger ways.  For instance, I
  highlighted with the cursor a package that wasn't installed, then
  pushed + to mark it for installation, moved the cursor back over it,
  and pushed - to mark it for removal.  Nothing happened--it stayed
  marked for installation.  I couldn't figure out how to fix this.  If
  it's buggy in simple ways like this, it's probably buggy in more
  subtle ways.

* There's little documentation.

After these, at least, are fixed, I'd agree that it's preferable to
dselect, mostly because it's a lot simpler.  dselect is not my
favorite program.