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Re: dselect-upgrade vs dist-upgrade



Am Di, den 04.11.2003 schrieb Benedict Verheyen um 10:55:
> Hi,
> 
> when cloning a system via the dpkg --get-selection, dpkg --set-selection
> method, it's advised to do a apt-get dselect-upgrade instead of
> apt-get dist-upgrade. I do not understand why.

>From the man page (man apt-get):
       dselect-upgrade
dselect-upgrade is used  in  conjunction  with  the  traditional
Debian  packaging front-end, dselect(8). dselect-upgrade follows
the changes made by dselect(8) to the Status field of  available
packages,  and  performs  the  actions necessary to realize that
state (for instance, the removal of old and the installation  of
new packages).

       dist-upgrade
dist-upgrade, in addition to performing the function of upgrade,
also intelligently handles changing dependencies with  new  ver-
sions  of  packages;  apt-get  has a "smart" conflict resolution
system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most important  pack-
ages  at  the  expense of less important ones if necessary.  The
/etc/apt/sources.list file contains a  list  of  locations  from
which  to  retrieve desired package files.  See also apt_prefer-
ences(5) for a mechanism for overriding the general settings for
individual packages.

In short: dist-upgrade looks which INSTALLED packages need to be
upgraded, including new dependencies, while dselect-upgrade looks which
packages you want to (un-)install.

> Also, if you would use aptitude, what would be the correct way
> of doing this?

Don't use aptitude. I tried it out and found it in no way more
user-friendly than dselect itself (and dselect is a real PITA to use).
Just do it on the command line, and if you need a menu-based tool, use
synaptic (it's GTK-based).

joerg

-- 
Gib GATES keine Chance!



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