Adam Hardy wrote: > Do apt/dselect and aptitude share the same database as far as the > currently installed modules are concerned, ignoring whether the packages > were installed by apt or by aptitude? "apt/dpkg/aptitude use different databases" is a frequent statetement on this mailing list. It's largely a myth. dpkg is the underlying layer which is the only thing in Debian that installs or removes package, and its database about what is installed is used by all tools. /var/lib/dpkg/status is used by all package management tools in Debian to keep track of what is installed. dpkg is the only program that I know of that modifies this file (aside from dselect possibly, but that's dead), although some others do read it. apt uses /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin (and srcpkgcache.bin) to store some additional information beyond what is in dpkg's status file, but this is notably a _cache_; try deleting the file and watch apt-get update recreate it from the Release and Packages files it downloads, and from /var/lib/dpkg/status, with no data loss. It is only used to speed up apt's access to the information and does not contain any unique data of its own. aptitude is just a frontend to apt and uses the same pkgcache file in the same way. It also uses /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates for storing a few pieces of information that dpkg's status file does not support. This includes information about whether a package was manually selected or was installed to satisfy a dependency. IMHO there's no reason why this information couldn't be rolled back into /var/lib/dpkg/status for use by other tools eventually. It also includes a way to store state about a package being held at a particulr version, something that is supported to a lesser extent by the dpkg status file. synaptic, another frontend to apt, uses the same database files as apt and no others AFAIK. All four tools have different approaches for resolving complex dependency/conflict sutuations, which are much more likely to lead to differences in behavior. -- see shy jo
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