Re: Is apt-get still the cool package installer?

[Nick Boyce <nick@glimmer.adsl24.co.uk>]

Joey Hess wrote:

> John Jason Jordan wrote:
>
>> But all the people in the know about Debian tell me I should be using aptitude.
>> I suppose I should switch, but that would require learning new stuff. After a
>> graduate degree my brain is full, so if I learn new stuff I'll have to delete
>> some of the old stuff. Bah.
> 
> A garbage collection shortcut for your memory: All of the old reasons
> to use aptitude instead of apt-get for command-line package installation
> no longer apply; those improvements have been rolled back into apt-get.

Wow, really ?

The main advantage of aptitude over apt-get (IMO) used to be (sarge/etch
IIRC) that aptitude added extra info into the apt database flagging
packages that were only installed as a dependency of some other
explicitly installed package, so that a subsequent 'aptitude remove' of
the explicitly-installed top-level package would also remove the
dependency packages because apt now knew the packages were no longer
needed.  It kept cruft out of the system.

Has that specific functionality been rolled back into apt-get ?

Cheers,
Nick Boyce