On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 02:07:15PM -0600, Alex Malinovich wrote:
> On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 08:37, Michael P. Soulier wrote:
> > On 16/02/03 Alex Malinovich did speaketh:
> >
> > > Personally, I generally stick to apt-get and apt-cache for most of my
> > > maintenance work. But I'll never give up dselect. Aptitude makes no
> > > sense to me whatsoever. dselect just makes everything really simple.
> > > Though, from what I understand, I'm more likely to get odd, unbelieving,
> > > cross-eyed glances than "Me too's!" for that. :)
> >
> > I'm afraid of dselect. Every time I try to use it, it insists on
> > installing a bunch of crap that I didn't ask for.
>
> Actually, this is primarily the reason that I like dselect. That list of
> "crap" is all of the recommends and suggests that are present in the
> package. A few years ago, I would have said this to be unnecessary, but
> with the Debian repository having how many thousands of packages now,
> there's really no way to know about all of the cool new things available
> all the time. I think the rationale behind it is that if, for example,
> you're installing cdrecord, you'd probably also want a front end for it.
> apt-get will just install it and then go away. dselect (and I'd imagine
> aptitude as well, to give it its fair credit :) will show you xcdroast
> because it's suggested by cdrecord.
There's one problem: dselect is retarded WRT "Recommends". That is,
when dselect pops up the "Conflict Resolution" screen with all the
"Suggests" and "Recommends" pre-selected, you are free to peruse that
list and de-select (I hate that word in conjunction with dselect) any
packages which you decide you really don't need (for example some huge
doc package). If that package was a Suggested one, no problem.
However, if it was Recommended dselect pitches a fit and takes you
back to the resolution screen with that package again pre-selected for
you. Annoying. Fortunately, you can tell dselect "No really, I want
you to not install package foo" by typing 'Q' to exit the resolution
screen, but it's still a PITA.
--
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@incanus.net
Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me
and I'll understand.
-- Chinese Proverb
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