Re: mixing syanptic and aptitude

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 05 Apr 2007 07:28:26 +0200
Joe Hart <j.hart@orange.nl> wrote:

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> Atis wrote:
> >> You can use both, but you will confuse aptitude in the process.
> >> Aptitude keeps a database so that it knows which packages it pulled in
> >> as dependencies so it can remove them when you remove a package (so long
> >> as no other package is using them).  If you pull things in with any
> >> other package manager, be it apt-get, synaptic, adept, gdebi or
> >> kpackage, aptitude will not know about the dependencies that those
> >> package managers installed and could present problems the next time you
> >> use aptitude because it may remove things that other programs need.
> >>
> >> To sum it up, the best advice is to use aptitude exclusively if you plan
> >> on using it at all.
> > 
> > Isn't it the way around? That aptitude keeps track of packages that
> > are installed automatically, as dependencies, and if you uninstall
> > something, it checks if those dependencies can be removed? Logically
> > thinking, it would be that.
> > 
> > I use synaptics together with aptitude and haven't had any problems with
> > that.
> 
> Then luck has been with you.

I believe Joe is correct; Synaptic and apt-get work fine together, but
they will both confuse aptitude, which maintains more sophisticated
dependency tracking than they do. Either use apt-get / Synaptic, or go
with aptitude. Aptitude, IMO, is the better choice. It's more powerful
and can do anything that apt-get can, and in my experience, Synaptic's
GUI doesn't add much value, and you can use aptitude in interactive
mode.

Celejar