On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 09:37:12PM +0000, Justin B Rye wrote: > Justin B Rye wrote: > > Still it seems nobody's interested. Would it help if I was more > > specific? The chapter on upgrading has: > [...] > > Patch attached. > Going back to the aptitude non-olfactory mode nonsense, here's a patch > for that. > I'm standardising on "full-console mode", given that nobody has > suggested anything better. The reason no one has suggested anything better is that 'visual mode' is the *canonical name* for running aptitude in this mode. Please don't have a proxy battle with the aptitude maintainer via the release notes - if you disagree with the name "visual mode", please get the aptitude documentation fixed *first*, rather than inventing inconsistent language that will be used only in the release notes. > If you were about to object that the name isn't appropriate when you're in > an X session, bear in mind that we've already advised people not to run a > dist-upgrade that way. That advice should be obsolete with current releases; there's a 'fixme' already in the release notes about it, which hasn't been reviewed since 2008. Someone should double-check when removing this warning, but I'm rather certain that recent display managers don't have this problem. > This patch also tweaks section 2.1.3: > The preferred program for interactive package management from a > terminal is _aptitude_. For a non-interactive command line interface > for package management, it is recommended to use _apt-get_. [...] > Obviously, if I say "apt-get purge dbus", it won't perform that action > "non-interactively", it'll ask "Do you want to continue [Y/n]?" - it's > just that it won't use a persistent textual UI. I'm rephrasing it as: > The preferred program for interacting with the package database from > a terminal is _aptitude_. For individual package management actions, > it is recommended to use _apt-get_ on the command line. [...] I don't think this text is an improvement. "Individual package management actions" does not read to me as covering an 'apt-get dist-upgrade' that upgrades every package on the system. Nor do I think "interacting with the package database" is a useful description of when one should prefer aptitude vs. apt-get - *all* packgae management operations are "interacting with the package database". The only case where aptitude should be preferred over apt-get is where the user wishes to fine-tune the package manager's solution. "Interactive" vs. "non-interactive" maps that as well as anything else I can think of, but perhaps you can think of another way to express this. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developer http://www.debian.org/ slangasek@ubuntu.com vorlon@debian.org
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