Re: xcdroast in sid/unstable not installable?
On Tue, Jul 03, 2001 at 02:33:29PM +0200, tim wrote:
> On Tuesday, 3. July 2001 02:12, Marc Wilson wrote:
> > Especially since dselect doesn't, in fact, handle dependencies
> > superior to apt, since they both use the SAME dependency mechanism.
> >
> > Something else is at work here. Did you, perhaps, forget to update
> > before trying to install xcdroast, and remembered to do that when you
> > used dselect?
> >
> > What ELSE did dselect decide to install on your box when you did
> > this?
>
> hmmm, I deffinately did "apt-get update" before anything else. I
> remember I started dselect, without choosing any packages it wanted to
> INSTALL all packeges I installed in an upgrading (woody - sid) process
> via apt, again. I was curious but thought that apt does not update the
> database of dselect or whatever, so I said yes.
You see, apt-get does not share its database with dpkg. The canonical
dpkg database is the available database. You can update is manually,
with "dpkg --update-avail packages-file" or you can have dselect do it
for you. If you never update the dpkg available database, it grows
stale. An "apt-get update" will not update it. If it must be from
the command-line, "dselect update" will do it.
Dselect can do much more. In the package selections management screen,
it verifies dependencies and allows you to readjust your selections to
keep package selections consistent at a high level.
> Joost, recommended me to use dselect. After starting it, in INSTALL
> where allready ~30MB of different stuff. I remember it was mainly
> libstuff but otheres as well (gpm, biff - and other UNWANTED stuff...).
> I didnt say Y at this point. I SELECTed xcdroast and went to INSTALL
> again. Now I had exactly the ~30MB + xcdroast nothing else. I said Y.
> everything is working now.
You can always go back to the package selections management screen and
remove packages you don't think you need. Dselect will prompt you with
the implied selections of other packages and then you can always say:
"no thanks, bring me back please" or "yes, that should go too".
For the record, I'm not trying to argue that people should never use
apt-get directly. It's just better to run "dselect update" from the
command line than "apt-get update", for the above reasons. And do check
out the package selections management screen once in a while every so
many upgrade, for your own sanity.
I am not an apt-get basher. The "apt" access method finally made the
install function in dselect robust and dependable. I vividly remember
the times of the dpkg-ftp method, that ignored predepends, for example.
What I do object to, is the currently popular myth among mostly poorly
informed individuals, that apt-get is the doorway to slack everlasting.
It is not. You can't ignore the problems that are being reported.
Stop misleading the poor newbies onto the "easy" low road. It leads
a twisted path into hell.
Angels fear to tread, where fools apt-get. Use dselect instead.
If you want to understand the debian package management system, read
the proper manpage, dpkg(8).
Cheers,
Joost
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