Re: aptitude vs. apt-get
On Sat, Feb 05, 2005 at 01:39:02AM +0100, Eddy wrote:
> Steve Lamb a écrit le 04/02/05 23:50 :
> >nori heikkinen wrote:
> >
> >>on Thu, 03 Feb 2005 02:41:42PM -0600, Ron Johnson insinuated:
> >>
> >>>Some of us dislike aptitude because it insists on removing packages
> >>>for seemingly random reasons.
>
> My system (sarge) is updated regularly.
> Right now, apt-get -s upgrade shows nothing to install and 2 packages
> kept back.
> apt-get -s dist-upgrade explains why : 2 additionnal packages should be
> installed to fulfill the (new) dependencies of those 2 kept back packages.
>
> aptitude -s dist-upgrade wants to install 25 new packages and remove 37
> others !
>
> > Since aptitude does tell you exactly why it is removing packages if
> >the user cannot take in that information it is PEBKAC.
>
> The OP said he didn't like aptitude's behaviour.
> Why do *you* have a problem with that ? You must have one though because
> I can't see why you would start PEBKACking him otherwise.
>
> Seriously, I admit there probably is an explanation to the aptitude
> behaviour. I haven't got a problem with that but I just don't see why I
> should bother trying to understand aptitude when apt-get does the job I
> want.
>
> As for your assertion that "aptitude does tell you exactly why it is
> removing packages", well it simply is not true. At least not always. And
> when it does it's not always correct.
> (Again aptitude's doc probably provides explanations but don't pretend
> that those informations are provided by aptitude itself.)
>
> Example 1.
>
> I start aptitude and type "g" to see what it plans to do.
>
> It wants to remove vim as an "unused" package. As far as unused packages
> go, I use this one everyday. Well let's read further... "It was
> installed automatically". Well that's a lie : I installed it on pupose
> but I didn't do it with aptitude. I can accept this kind of behaviour
> but I will certainly not consider the message displayed as correct.
>
> Example 2
>
> It will remove libgnutls11-dev because it has 4 missing dependencies.
> Well apt-get installing those show that they are installed with the
> latest versions; apt-get install libgnutls11-dev tells the same.
>
> Example 3
>
> It will install festival. Why ? It sure doesn't say and I really don't
> need it. The same goes for a lot of other packages.
> I am not saying there is no reason to do it (and it is probably due to
> the options regarding dependencies) but do not tell me that aptitude
> gives the reason for its actions.
>
> Example 4
>
> It wants to remove alsa, anacron and lots of other basic stuff and once
> again does not provide any reason.
>
> >
> >>... or installing huge numbers of packages on a whim
> >
> >
> > Then turn off installing recommends by default. Again, if a user
> >doesn't even give a quick glance to the options aptitude has then it is
> >PEBKAC.
>
> OK. I did that. F10 -> Options -> Gestion des dépendances where I
> deselected everything : no automatic resolution of dependencies, no
> correction of broken packages, no recommended packages and no
> suppression of unused packages.
>
> Unfortunately, it still insists on doing the actions mentioned above.
> Closing aptitude and starting it again doesn't change anything but using
> the command line doesn't give the same result as before. He now only
> wants to remove 1 package and install 7 new ones (and update the 2 that
> were kept back).
>
> Well, as I said, I won't bother with aptitude as long as apt-get does
> the job. Yet I'd be curious to understand why the options chosen in the
> UI do not have any influence in the UI itself but do on the command
> line. Weird.
A lot of this sounds to me like aptitude's package cache is broken. You
could try moving /var/lib/apitude/pkgstates somewhere else and running it again
to see if that fixes anything.
--
Steve Block
http://ev-15.com/
http://www.steveblock.com/
scblock@ev-15.com
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