Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, Mar 31, 2015, at 05:14, Fabian Greffrath wrote:
> I am curious why the aptitude package still has Priority: standard, i.e.
> why it is installed next to apt in each and every Debian installation?
>
> Aptitude isn't recommended for dist-upgrading since Lenny, I think.
>
> Do we really need to have two CLI package management tools installed, is
> this reasonable?
Well, aptitude IS the CLI package manager. As far as I know, it is also the most complete and advanced package manager Debian has. Make no mistake: aptitude is the Debian package manager you should be using if you can deal with text mode and the command line.
apt-get is the simple tool everyone knows about, though. It also needs another simple tools like apt-cache to be really usable. We can't very well leave them out of the "standard" Debian system, based on popularity alone. And the dependency resolver in apt-get is often far easier to tailor for dist-upgrade than the one in aptitude.
That said, apt-get / apt-cache are simplified package management tools. They're useful, and easier to tailor to the dist-upgrade process. However, for day-to-day use, apt-get/apt-cache have nowhere near all the capabilities of a fully featured package manager like aptitude. You can probably duplicate most of aptitude's functionality with apt-get+apt-cache+lots of scripting nowadays, but still...
So, yes, IMO we need both aptitude and the simplified apt toolset in "standard".
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org>
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