Re: Upgrading KDE and it's dependencies
Bob Proulx wrote:
> I have a rather agressive method.
> KDEVERSION=$(dpkg --status kdelibs4 | awk '/^Version:/{print$2}')
> grep-available -n -s Package $KDEVERSION > /tmp/kde-pkg.list
> apt-get remove --purge $(</tmp/kde-pkg.list)
>
> Then upgrade. Then reinstall KDE. Yes it is harsh.
That's not just harsh, that's plain gross and wildly unnecessary. This
isn't rpm on Red Hat 4.2. You can trust apt and its friends, you know.
And then in a followup message you continued:
> in my work lab engineering environment with a lot of random users
> installing a lot of random kde components
In your lab, "a lot of random users" have root? Nice.
> But during the testing phase APT (either apt-get or aptitude) would
> find a different local minima than the one I want. The problems are
> almost always one of two types. APT wants to remove a large number of
> packages that I want installed. Those are actually fairly easy. Let
> it remove those packages and just install them again later.
You think letting apt remove "a large number of packages that I want" is
the correct way to administer a debian box?
I know this sounds harsh, but I think you need to keep your suggestions
to yourself. You're leading newbies wildly astray.
Sorry, I don't mean to sound like a dick. I know I do. :-/
To anyone having trouble upgrading, I suggest learning aptitude or at
least dselect, and learning them well enough so that you can use them
to resolve any unusual dependency issues. The information will always
be in front of you in these tools. You should never have to remove and
then reinstall "a large number of packages" in the blind hope that that
fixes your problems. That Windows mentality ("I don't know what's
going on, so I'm going to uninstall and then reinstall") has absolutely
no place in Debian and is entirely unnecessary. I've been running the
same damn original Debian install from 1998, 3 computers and 4 hard
drives removed, and I'm still running as perfect as day 1, without any
cruft or any bullshit forced purge and then reinstall. Ugh. I'm sorry
Bob, but that just makes me sick. Please don't encourage people to
think that way.
Reply to: