Re: apt-get deprecated?
On Saturday 30 April 2005 07:19, Lee Braiden <jel@tundra.ath.cx>
(<[🔎] 200504301419.39398.jel@tundra.ath.cx>) wrote:
> On Saturday 30 April 2005 08:52, Jules Dubois wrote:
>> In one case, I must type
>>
>> apt-get install package
>>
>> In the other case, I may type
>>
>> aptitude install package
>>
>> Sure, I save one keystroke but there's no hyphen in aptitude. I think it
>> about evens out.
>
> There is more difference between the two than that.
Your quotation is my response to a user who didn't know much about aptitude.
He or she had the idea there was no command-line interface, and therefore
came to several erroneous conclusions.
> I'm not quite sure why, but aptitude will often want to uninstall MANY
> packages, for things like a simple package install, that apt-get will
> happily do without bother.
I haven't seen this since shortly after I switched from apt-get and Synaptic
to aptitude. After the switch-over, it's never done this. When I install
a package with apt-get, it installs (as it should) the necessary dependent
packages; removing this 'original' package does not cause those now-unused
dependencies to be removed.
Your statements raise, in my opinion, a genuine issue.
In the case you mention, it's probably that aptitude wants to remove what it
considers to be 'unused' packages. If you've been using something else,
aptitude may (read: almost certainly does) consider many packages to be
unused, and you disagree (properly) with its interpretation.
Personally, I updated the package database using aptitude, by hand -- this
is basically a one-time, if tedious, process. Following this, the idea
that "apt-get will happily do without the bother" means that apt-get won't
automatically remove packages which are really are unused. In those days,
I found some cases where four versions of a library were installed of which
three really were unneeded. (Whether this state of affairs requires
correction is generally a matter of opinion. In my opinion, it did.)
To 'tidy' such a system requires either
* knowing a priori which packages can be purged;
* trial and error at simulating package removal while noting which
(otherwise desirable or necessary) packages might also be removed; or
* using some tool which shows the dependencies of packages you want,
and removing anything which doesn't appear in these lists.
Switching to aptitude requires some manual intervention. Using aptitude
afterward doesn't.
> Personally, I just don't trust aptitude any more. Not that I'm blaming
> aptitude: I may simply not understand it,
I'd like to claim it's lack of understanding is the case. I haven't seen
aptitude make any mistakes in about eighteen months. OTOH, I never had any
such problem with apt-get or Synaptic.
> but aptitude definitely isn't a drop-in, more modern version of apt-get.
If one uses aptitude from the start, it is a drop-in replacement. If one
doesn't, some real work is required, and then it's again a drop-in
replacement. Whether that extra work makes it worthwhile is a question
each user-administrator must answer.
I vote for aptitude with its additional dependency management.
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