Re: Wheezy - aptitude safe-upgrade vs apt-get dist-upgrade
On 28/02/2012 01:25, Whit Hansell wrote:
>
>
> Thanks for your reply. I had done some googling at the debian site and
> found info on the differences as you state. I have to admit I am not
> sure which is the best way to update/upgrade my system. I had read a
> few years ago that "aptitude" was the recommended way as it supposedly
> handles dependencies better so have always used it. But also "knew"
> about the statement about it not removing packages, etc.
I don't think Debian have made it too clear about which is the preferred
way of doing it simply because they like to promote choice of package
management tool.
And I can't recall 100% if this is all correct but it's my gist:
There was a time when aptitude was recommended as it was much better at
dependency resolution. Also it was the recommended tool for upgrades
for this very reason. But in one release, was it Lenny?, it was
recommended to use apt for the upgrade due to a dependency loop that
would get aptitude in a fit for certain configurations. They both share
more information via libapt(?) and so it's even supposed to be safe to
use them both without any harmful effects. But I tend to use apt as
I've used it a long time and every time I use aptitude I cock something
up :) (better the devil you know).
There was some news recently that aptitude is back in active development
and a load of old bugs have been sorted out, so maybe there'll be a new
release soon -- who knows?
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