Bug#411280: apt-get actually works (sometimes?) better than aptitude

[Osamu Aoki <osamu@debian.org>]

Hi,

On Mon, Aug 09, 2010 at 02:50:13PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Thanks to Simon and Osamu for directing this discussion to the right place.

You are welcome.
 
> I think it's clear that the behavior of aptitude in releases after etch has
> not been stable and predictable enough for us to recommend it in the release
> notes as a non-interactive upgrade interface.  I will submit a patch to the
> release notes to address this.

Sometimes, we get side tracked by the nice interactive features of
aptitude :-)

So far, ease of "hold" feature of aptitude is the missing feature for
apt-get command line.  Writing /etc/apt/preferences by hand to hold
a package is quite cumbersome....  If "apt-get hold ..." creates a file
in /etc/apt/preferences.d, maybe difference is smaller but this is not
so important.

apt-get has improved a lot.

If you have time, please check my updated Debian Reference. I borrowed
much of your idea.  I just do not want to have gross misunderstanding.

  http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en.html#_literal_apt_get_literal_literal_apt_cache_literal_vs_literal_aptitude_literal

I did notice constant breakage of aptitude resolver. So I put them as
following note for people to understand situation:

Note

Although the aptitude command comes with rich features such as its
enhanced package resolver, this complexity had caused (or may still
causes) some regressions such as Bug #411123, Bug #514930, and Bug
#570377. In case of doubts, please use the apt-get and apt-cache
commands over the aptitude command.