Re: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)

[Frans Pop <elendil@planet.nl>]

Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Steve Langasek]
>> Not only is apt-get now strong enough to handle the cases for which we
>> recommended aptitude in the sarge timeframe (with much better resolution
>> of upgrades, installation of Recommends by default, and tracking of
>> auto-installed packages), but aptitude has also had several deplorable
>> regressions since etch.  I don't know which of these made it into the
>> lenny release or which are still present in squeeze, but:
>>
>>   - When I type 'aptitude install foo', *removing* foo instead of
>>     upgrading is not a valid solution and should never be offered.
>>   - When I type 'aptitude install foo', installing 5 packages, removing
>>     3 others, and upgrading 7 more *without installing foo* is not a
>>     valid solution and should never be offered.
> 
> If these are present, they sound like good arguments for changing
> tasksel to use apt-get instead of aptitude.

Not really as these issues generally only occur when packages are being 
*upgraded* using 'aptitude install <package>', not when they are being 
newly installed.
When upgrading the issues will also occur more frequently if packages are 
broken (e.g. when upgrading in unstable) than when they are installable.

I don't think these issues are all that relevant in the D-I context.

>> I believe the correct recommendations would be:
>>
>>   - apt-get for all commandline operations, including package
>>   installation and removal, and dist-upgrades
> 
> I assume you mean all over debian-installer too?  The apt-install
> script would have to change, as well as tasksel.

For tasksel that would destroy the option to review which packages get 
installed, which is an important option when tasksel is invoked manually 
(I've used it for example to determine task sizes for the Installation 
Guide).

Please make very sure you don't introduce regressions or loss of 
functionality when considering such changes.

> I suspect those two are the only ones using apt-get or aptitude
> directly in debian-installer.

I suspect you are wrong. apt-install does not use aptitude, but pkgsel 
does. Is it really so hard to check (grep) the D-I source before writing 
such mails, especially when pretending to be a D-I developer?

Cheers,
FJP