Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> writes:

> I remember, years ago, I asked on some Debian list what the intended
> replacement for apt-cache was, since I'd been told that apt-get was
> deprecated in favor of aptitude and I'd seen that aptitude did not seem
> to have equivalents for the apt-cache commands.

For a while, we were recommending people use aptitude for upgrades instead
of apt-get because the dependency resolver did a better job.  That's
probably where the "deprecated" part came from, as that recommendation did
get reported that way.

However, time marches on, and the apt-get resolver has gotten better.

I think both programs have their place.  Personally, I'd recommend the apt
tool for command-line package installation because I think its defaults
are safer and less confusing.  But it has no equivalent to aptitude for a
curses-based examination of the packages on the system and new packages
now available, which is a rather nice feature.

In terms of dependency resolvers, I think a reasonably fair way to
characterize them is that apt-get errs on the side of caution and can
default to refusing to do anything, whereas aptitude tries a lot harder to
find a dependency solution that changes the system at the cost of
generating a lot of bogus solutions.

My personal experience is that, when I have a difficult or complex
dependency issue on a system, the *second* solution offered by aptitude is
usually better than the only solution offered by apt-get (mostly because
apt-get usually gives up), but the *first* solution offered by aptitude is
usually awful and sometimes actually destructive.  I always found that
pattern strange and kind of amusing, but it's surprising how reliable "run
aptitude and take the second thing it suggests" is in resolving weird
dependency problems.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>