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Re: apt-get deprecated?



On 4/30/05, Lee Braiden <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.  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.
> Personally, I just don't trust aptitude any more.  Not that I'm blaming
> aptitude: I may simply not understand it, but aptitude definitely isn't a
> drop-in, more modern version of apt-get.
> 

Somebody else may have already responded to this, but anyway, the full
answer as I see it  is this. When starting aptitude, aptitude updates
its own packages list by reading in the dpkg state and merging it with
its own list.

Now there's several bugs posted on aptitude (check bugs.debian.org)
about its command line interface. Apparently, this loading of the
package cache doesn't happen completely or reliably in command line
mode, resulting in aptitude not knowing about any packages you
installed with apt-get, or manually set to hold with dpkg (and not
with aptitude). Running aptitude and going in the curses interface
should be a reliable workaround.

greets,
Wim



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