Re: Downside to Aptitude?

[Paul Morgan <paulswm@earthlink.net>]

M. Kirchhoff wrote:

> I've recently started using aptitude from the console instead of apt-get
> for package management on my Woody systems.  I find some of the
> features, like the ability to do a "--with-suggests", quite useful.  It
> seems like Aptitude does a better job of handling dependencies as well.
>
> Are there any pitfalls when using Aptitude to manage a system? For
> example, running
>
> aptitude update && aptitude upgrade
>
> instead of 
>
> apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
>
> Is Aptitude being pushed as the replacement for dselect, or perhaps as
> an eventual replacement for apt-get?
>
> Thanks for any thoughts.  
>
> --
> me.kirchhoff
>
>
>  
I have not yet found a downside to aptitude, but I found a huge upside 
back in August.

I regularly did:

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade    #(never "upgrade")

One day I was astonished to see that apt-get wanted to remove half my 
system:
---------------------------------
# apt-get -s dist-upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Calculating Upgrade... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  acct adduser anacron apache at base-config binutils bonobo bsdmainutils
  calamaris cdrecord console-common console-data console-tools cron
  debconf-utils debhelper dhelp docbook-dsssl dpkg-dev dump exim fingerd
g77
  g77-3.3 galeon-common galeon-nautilus gcc gcc-3.3 gdm gnome-doc-tools
  gnome-gv gs gs-common info2www ipchains kernel-package
kernel-source-2.4.21
  libgnomeprint-data libgnomeprint15 libpaper-utils libpaper1 libpaperg
lilo
  locales logrotate lpr lvm-common lvm10 mailx man-db man2html mozilla
  mozilla-browser mozilla-mailnews mozilla-psm multi-gnome-terminal
  multi-gnome-terminal-doc nautilus netbase nntpcache pan ppp pppconfig
pppoe
  pppoeconf quota setserial squid webmin webmin-apache webmin-core
  webmin-inetd webmin-lilo webmin-lpadmin webmin-lvm webmin-ppp
webmin-quota
  webmin-raid webmin-squid webmin-xinetd x-window-system
x-window-system-core
  xcdroast xdm xfonts-100dpi xfonts-base xfonts-scalable xinetd xnest
  xpdf-reader xpdf-utils xprt xprt-common xserver-common xserver-xfree86
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  liblocale-gettext-perl libtext-charwidth-perl libtext-iconv-perl
  libtext-wrapi18n-perl module-init-tools
The following packages have been kept back
  debconf
1 packages upgraded, 5 newly installed, 96 to remove and 1  not upgraded.
----------------------
... so I installed aptitude and ran

aptitude dist-upgrade

Aptitude did the install and upgrade part but didn't want to remove 96 
packages.

I've used aptitude for dist-upgrades ever since.

Incidentally, this is a very good argument against doing automatic, 
unattended dist-upgrades :)

--
"They made us many promises, more than I can remember, but they never
kept but one: they promised to take our land, and they took it."

- Chief Red Cloud (Mahpiua Luta) of the Oglala Sioux