Re: Source of Debian wisdom
On Sun, Aug 19, 2007 at 09:25:15PM +0200, Manon Metten wrote:
> On 8/19/07, Douglas A. Tutty <dtutty@porchlight.ca> wrote:
>
> Note that many of the horror stories about aptitude involved
> > people using it as a CLI replacement for apt-get instead of using its
> > curses interface.
>
> Are you saying I should NOT use aptitude as a replacement for
> apt-get, like this: "aptitude install new-package" ?
>
> I've been using aptitude like this all the time ever since I installed etch
> with no problems whatsoever.
>
> What's the problem of doing so and not using it's user interface?
>
There's nothing wrong with it. However, the first time you use
aptitude, everything will be marked as manually installed. When you
tell it to install things, it will bring in what is needed to meet
dependencies. Whether or not it considers 'recommends' as dependencies
is selectable from the interactive menu (or a config file in /etc).
Two common problems:
If you mix with apt-get, apt-get will work but all packages will be
marked as manually installed in aptitude (actually, the won't be marked
as Automatically installed). This leads to the cruft buildup that
aptitude is suposed to help you prevent.
The other problem is this. Install package A. Aptitude brings in
package B to meet a dependancy. Over time, you get attached to package
B in its own right. Later, either package A changes and doesn't need B
or you remove A. If you haven't told aptitude that you want to keep B,
it will go ahead and remove it too.
In interactive mode, you get a detailed preview (with reasons) of what
aptitude wants to do. You can then edit that preview to fine-tune it
before telling aptitude to go ahead. It really tries to protect you
from yourself without preventing you from shooting yourself in the foot
if that is really what you want to do.
When running stable, the problems don't show up too frequently.
However, when Etch was testing, many people were using aptitude for the
first time coincident with shifting package dependancies. There were
frequent posts to the list like "Aptitude wants to remove 150
packages!!!". They were using the CLI and didn't get the detailed
explanation from aptitude that they would from the curses interface.
Doug.
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