Re: package management begins to annoy me
On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:20:58PM +0100, Urs Thuermann wrote:
> I use Debian testing on 2 desktop machines and a notebook, the oldest
> of them is 4-5 years old. While in the begining I found apt-get and
> dpkg quite usable (but didn't like dselect), now aptitude tends more
> and more to annoy me, for several reasons. Maybe, and I hope so, this
> is only because i don't know apt-get and aptitude well enough.
>
> 1. aptitude has the nice feature of marking packages that are install
> automatically, qhich I always missed in apt-get. But every once in
> a while I check the installed package with
>
> aptitude search . | grep ^i
>
> (BTW, is there a simpler way to do this?) and I quite often see
> installed packages, which are not marked 'A' for automatically
> installed but which I definitely know I have never installed
> manually. Unfortunately, I currently don't have examples at hand.
Use aptitude in full-screen mode so you can see what is happening.
Try limiting the display to packages that are installed that are not
marked automatic: l (for limit)
~i!~M
or aptitude search '~i!~M'
Tell aptitude not to automatically install recommended packages (under
options/dependancy handling).
go down the list and ensure that only those packages you really want are
listed. If you don't want it, mark it as automatic. If nothing needs
it, it will be marked for removal.
Doug.
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