Re: aptitude keeps trying to replace my vim-gtk and ftpd
Jules Dubois(3f88o9g02@sneakemail.com) is reported to have said:
> On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 14:35:49 -0500, Wayne Topa wrote:
>
> > Jules Dubois(3f88o9g02@sneakemail.com) is reported to have said:
> >> On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 10:54:56 -0500, Wayne Topa wrote:
> >>
> >> If you want to keep bluefish, tell aptitude you installed it
> >> "manually".
> >>
> > I didn't install it manually.
>
> I should have been more specific.
>
> When aptitude installs something "automatically", for example a support
> library or the components of a big application set such as GNOME, it
> does so because some other package you installed depended on it. If you
> later remove that other package, you don't have any further need for the
> automatically installed package(s) because you didn't specifically ask for
> it (them) in the first place. Then, aptitude will remove it (them) for
> you.
>
> You said you didn't install bluefish manually, and that's certainly what
> aptitude thinks. Since nothing depends on it, aptitude is going to remove
> it.
>
> Now, what I meant was 'tell aptitude you installed it "manually"'. It
> doesn't matter whether you did this (or not). When you tell aptitude you
> installed bluefish manually, it won't try to remove it simply because
> nothing depends on it.
>
> > Well it struck me a bit odd that I had bluefish runing an edit of my web
> > page and aptitude was somehow informed that it wasn't being used.
>
> This is only a reference to dependencies. Aptitude can't know what you
> want or use, only that no other manually installed package -- i.e.,
> package specifically requested for installation -- uses it. Just tell
> it you want it, and you can change your mind later if you so choose.
>
> > I think I'll just remove aptitude and keep doing the dselsct update ;
> > apt-get dist-upgrade.
>
> Everybody has their preferences. I found some difficulties when I
> switched from Synaptic to aptitude, because nothing but aptitude handles
> this sort of installation dependency tracking.
>
> I hope my explanation of aptitude's automatic removal of unused packages
> helps you in your decision. (You might see that I am a fan of aptitude
> and one of its best features is the automatic removal of "unused" [sic]
> packages.)
>
I see that, for many, aptitude does do many helpful tasks. I
appreciate your views and might just keep it installed for those
times where I will be removing a gaggle of packages. I will continie
to use apt-get for my day to day use however.
Thanks to all for the comments.
Wayne
--
For any problem there is a solution that is simple, quick, and
ultimately worse than the problem.
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