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Re: new to debian have questions



On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 16:04:16 +0200
joost@topaz.mdcc.cx (Joost Kooij) wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 12, 2001 at 03:19:00PM +0200, Mart van de Wege wrote:
> > On Thu, 12 Jul 2001 02:08:58 +0200
> > joost@topaz.mdcc.cx (Joost Kooij) wrote:
> > 
> > > Dselect has a "select" mode that lets you manage your package
> selections
> > > interactively.  The advantage of this is that you retain full
> control
> > > over package selections.
> > <huge snip>
> > 
> > Aye, there's the rub: IT DOESN'T! Sorry for shouting, but the way
> dselect
> > handles suggests and recommends is braindead, to say the least.
> > If I want to install some package and not the suggests that go with
> it, I
> > can forget about dselect, unless I use shift-q to override the package
> > selection, which frankly defeats the purpose of dselect in the first
> > place, doesn't it?
> 
> When I test this here on a sid system, this is what I can actually
> verify:
> 
> When you mark for installation a package that has a suggests: some other
> packages, dselect drops you in a dependency resolution screen.  The
> screen
> lists the newly marked package and all the suggested packages listed.
> Only the already marked package is marked for installation.  When you
> simply press enter, nothing is changed about your selections and you
> are back in the main list.  When instead you do want to add some of the
> suggested packages to your selections, mark them for installation and
> press enter.
> 
> In the case of a recommends:, it is usually a recommends: and not
> a suggests: for a reason.  When you add a package with recommends:
> to your selections, dselect will propose the implied markings of the
> recommended: packages.  But you can still easily change and override it,
> just revert the markings manually, or with the 'D' key, then override
> the automatic dependency resolver with the 'Q' key.  If you were never
> supposed to use these, they would not have been programmed and
> prominently
> documented in the online help that is available in the package
> selections
> management mode.
> 

Ok,

So I messed up suggests: and recommends:. Sue me :) I must agree with you
though that dselect is not half as intimidating as its opponents like to
pretend, but it *can* be cumbersome at times.

> > It's true that some packages don't quite work as expected until you've
> > installed *all* dependencies (Gnome comes to mind), so for these
> dselect
> > is good, but otherwise it installs way too much cruft on your system
> and
> > gives you no sane way of getting rid of it.
> 
> Well, in fact it does.  There is the list of installed packages, from 
> which you can choose packages to uninstall.  It's intuitive, not?
> 
> Experiment a little with the package list sort options.  Find new ways
> of looking at installed packages and available packages.  By section,
> by status, by priority, or combinations thereof.  Explore previously
> untought of operations on whole groups of packages (don't aim at foot).
> 
Hmmm,

First thing I did half a year ago on installing Debian for the first time
was learn dselect in and out. I quite liked it, but haven't used it in
about 4 months or so, so my memories are a little vague. One thing I do
remember though, I installed Xshipwars, and dselect refused to install it
without the Y sound server (yiff-server IIRC). That clashed heavily with
the gnome esd server, to the effect that gnome wouldn't start at all. I
tried everything I could think of, but there was no way that dselect would
remove yiff-server with Xshipwars still installed.
I found out that apt alone would allow me to things like that, at the
added price that I would have to know in advance which packages to
install. I happen to prefer that.

Mart

-- 
Baby even the losers get lucky sometimes
Even the losers keep a little bit of pride

Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers - Even The Losers

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