Re: Meaning of "score" when looking for package solutions

[Jason Filippou <jason.filippou@gmail.com>]

> Daniel Burrows the maintainer of aptitude is a member of this list.
> Perhaps he might find some time to respond.  I did look into the same
> question a while back.  I believe what it comes down to is the lower the
> score of the solution the better.  Although I could be wrong about that.
> I took just a minute to see if I could remember where exactly I read about
> it.  I'm fairly sure it was the aptitude user's manual written by Daniel.
> http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/index.html
>
> Hope this helps.  And if you do find the answer, please come back and let
> us all know.
>
>
> - --
> Daryl Styrk
> Naples, FL USA

Thanks for the information. I thought that the exact sequence of my commands might give some insight on the subject, until I get the time to fully research that link. I wanted to install the ordinary compiz config
settings manager (and I was ashamed to admit it before), so:

jason@debian:~/DI/Syspro/project2$ sudo aptitude install compizconfig-settings-manager
[sudo] password for jason:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree      
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information      
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done 
The following packages are BROKEN:
  compiz-core
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  compizconfig-settings-manager libcompizconfig0{a} python-compizconfig{a}
0 packages upgraded, 3 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 738kB of archives. After unpacking 4497kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  compiz-core: Breaks: libcompizconfig0 (< 0.8.0) but 0.7.6-1 is to be installed.
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Install the following packages:
libcompizconfig0 [0.8.2-2 (unstable)] // Seeing that a package from the 'unstable' distribution were needed, I thought I'd better examine another solution first
libprotobuf3 [2.0.3-2 (testing, unstable)] 

Score is 9 // Note the score
Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]  n
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
compiz-gnome
compiz-gtk

Downgrade the following packages:
compiz-core [0.8.2-6 (testing, unstable, now) -> 0.7.6-7 (stable)]
compiz-plugins [0.8.2-6 (testing, unstable, now) -> 0.7.6-7 (stable)]

Score is -232 // This time the "x" value is way lower than the previous, this could be because the removal of some packages as well as the downgrading of others (a rather troublesome procedure) was suggested

Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?] q
Abandoning all efforts to resolve these dependencies.
Abort.

And that is that

Jason