Re: dftp & dselect
brian white writes ("dftp & dselect "):
> It seems that the functionality of 'dftp' and 'dselect' now overlap.
> dselect now has an FTP method and dftp can work off of NFS mounts,
> CD-ROM, and a hard drive. The primary difference now seems to be that
> dselect is geared toward selecting packages while dftp is geared
> towards keeping an istallation up-to-date (upgrading).
No, I don't think this is true. dselect does upgrading too.
> Ideally, I suppose, it would interface cleanly with dselect. With
> dselect's new FTP ability, this should not be too difficult. Perhaps
> it would just be a menu option in dselect that would scan the
> distribution and compare it against the installed packages to suggest
> which packages to upgrade, allowing the user to select the ones they
> want. This is exactly what dftp does now. After that, though,
> instead of just doing the FTP (cd-rom, nfs, etc) install, it would
> drop into dselect's package selector that would resolve dependancies
> and the like.
What you should do to integrate it into dselect is make a dselect FTP
method that can download one file while installing another, can cope
with the Packages files being slightly out of sync (as they will
inevitably sometimes be), and installs files immediately after having
downloaded them so that they don't have to sit around taking disk
space (during _or_ after installation).
If there is demand I can make dselect (optionally) display the version
numbers of the installed and available versions of a package, and have
it sort new packages first.
You can already use the `hold' flag to stop dselect from upgrading
things you want left alone.
brian white writes ("Re: dftp & dselect "):
> Dftp presents the user with a list of all packages that are new or
> have been updated and allows the user to choose which ones to
> retrieve/install. Dselect, on the other hand, requires that you know
> the package you want to install.
No, that's not true. dselect will show you which packages are new, by
putting an `n' in the selection display. I know that this display
isn't ideal for new users, but the information is there.
With a proper FTP method dselect would automatically upgrade what was
available, by default.
> The latest version of dftp will now run on an NFS mount, CD-ROM, etc.,
> so you can determine what has changed between what is installed and
> what is available on distributions other than FTP.
I think this is unwise. I don't think people should use dftp to
upgrade their systems if they're using NFS or CD-ROM; I think they
should use dselect.
If there are features that dselect is lacking then ask me to include
them, or look at the code and send me diffs.
behan b. webster writes ("Re: dftp & dselect "):
> dftp is ideal for keeping your debian installation up to date with the bleedy-
> edge packages in the development tree. (or so I've found)
> I find that I prefer to use dpkg and dftp to keep my system upto date
> rather than using dselect. (I just find it's easier).
Have you tried dselect ? dselect's only weakness atm in this area is
that the package listing display isn't ideal for seeing what new
packages are available, so that you can put them on hold to prevent
them from being upgraded.
Ian.
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