Re: aptitude and source packages
On Mon, Mar 21, 2005 at 09:00:38PM -0500, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 22, 2005 at 01:11:40AM +0200, Hugo van der Merwe wrote:
> > Aptitude uses the same package tracking as apt-get, there is only a
> > little extra status with things like "automatic" markings. You can
> > therefore practically always alternate apt-get and aptitude, except for
> > losing the "automatic" markings, which I like very much. aptitude update
> > does what is necessary (you don't need an apt-get update as well).
> > However:
> >
> > Source packages are not like binary packages, they are not even kept
> > track of. You don't have to be root, even, to download one. (If you
> > compile a source package to a binary one then install it, of course then
> > it will be kept track of.) kernel-source is different, it is actually a
> > "binary package" containing the source, I reckon because so many people
> > need kernel sources.
> >
> > So,
> >
> > apt-get build-dep gnucash
> > apt-get source gnucash
> >
> > > > I'm not positive but I think all src code is unavailable in unstable version
> > > > of debian till it becomes 'stable'.. Seems like they could do that because
> > > > it is changing so often during the testing phase..
> > > >
> > >
> > > I'm using testing. And wouldn't the binaries change at least as often as the
> > > source? They might have to change when their own source changes, and might
> > > they also be affected when other software they depend on changes?
> >
> > The source packages are definately available in unstable. It is however
> > possible that some "local mirrors" do not mirror all the source, I
> > suppose.
> >
> > Binaries can even change "more often" than the source, when only the
> > debian-modifications change. (Source packages consist of three files,
> > the "upstream" tarball, the debian diffs, and a ".dsc" file describing
> > these two and their checksums.)
> >
> > Hope this helped,
> > Hugo van der Merwe
>
> Thanks. This appears to be the definitive answer.
> Aptitude's documentation should probably say that
> aptitude doesn't do source.
Whereas I agree that having aptitude support the ability to download
sources would be nice, there is no indication that it has that
ability.
pryzbyj@andromeda:~$ { aptitude --help; man aptitude; } |grep -i source
Reformatting aptitude(8), please wait...
update Updates the list of available packages from the apt
sources
It might be worth a wishlist bug; I don't know if aptitude is strictly
meant for manipulation of binary packages.
Justin
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