Apt-get suggestion, was (Re: kernel depends?)

[esoR ocsirF <rosef@eou.edu>]

On Wed, Nov 29, 2000 at 08:20:26AM +1100, Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 04:11:45PM +0100, Jan Martin Mathiassen wrote:
> > dpkg -S as86 to find out what package it needed, 
> 
> No you couldn't, because bin86 wasn't installed.
> I used apt-cache search to find it myself.
> 
> 
I have been wishing for an apt-get functionality for a while now but...

Is it altogether unreasonable that 
apt-get install filename 
instead of 
apt-get install package 
should work? I would really enjoy having apt lookup the most appropriate 
package for any needed file or binary that I wish to install. If
multiple packages offered the same utility or file then I would probably
need to decide but not necessarily, a default selection would be ok also.

For instance, if I wanted to compile something that requires some obscure
library I would have to figure out what package that it is in then
install that package. As opposed to just telling apt to install that
library, this seems like unwanted work to me, but I suppose
there might be some con to this, however I can't think of any.

-- 
Frisco Rose             "By any other name, I would smell the same"
E.O.U. Stud.             rosef@quark.eou.edu         rosef@eou.edu
Physics                  Mathematics 	          Computer Science

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