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Re: Package system totaly a complete mess





Le 07.06.2014 11:58, Slavko a écrit :
Ahoj,

Dňa Sat, 7 Jun 2014 09:48:44 +0200 Thierry de Coulon
<tcoulon@decoulon.ch> napísal:

Hello all,

I've lived for years using synaptic and I am no so used to aptitude -
and I don't want to make mistakes...

Possibly my installation is now in such a state that I should
reinstall, but everything *is* working. Anyway:

- searching for broken packages gives 0 packages in synatiptic but 6
packages in aptitude.

- marking upgradable packages causes both to want to remove lots of
things (including parts of cups, Gimp, and of cours all my DE).

- If I try to update with aptitude it gives me a liste of packages
that should be "removed because they are no more used", which is
nonsense because most of them ARE in current use.

I tried Synaptic some years ago and i decide to don't use it, mostly
due style by which it works with dependencies (don't matter if Depends,
Suggests or Recommends), where it wasn't marks installed dependencies
as automatically installed, nor removes the packages which are not
needed more (by other packages).

You need to learn one thing - the "A" mark in the aptitude, eg (rest
of lines removed):

i    libpam0g-dev
i A  libpam0g
 ^^^

The highlighted "A" flag stand for automatically installed (as
dependency of some other package) package. When all packages (which
depends on automatically installed one) are removed (uninstalled), then
the automatically installed package is removed too.

Because Synaptic don't care about this dependency uninstall, then now
you have a lot packages marked with "A", but they seems as not needed
any more – which can be false, as you can see in the gimp case (IMO
by some meta-package uninstall).

Don't afraid, simple go to the e.g. gimp line and press the "+" key
(install) - it removes the "A" flag (and possible mark for update by
the "u" flag). It takes osme work until you repair these dependencies
relations, but it is safe - until you don't press the second "g". To
clean list of changes (the list before installation), you can simple
more time switch back ("q") and go ("g").

There can be useful the "Cancel pending actions" item in menu
"Actions", it unmarks all install/uninstall (perhaps the hold too)
actions on all packages, but preserves the "A" flag, then you can
continue play with "A" from the clean state.

Finally, you can maintain the "A" flag by the "M" and/or "m" keys,
which switch the "A" flag on/off.

Hope this help you.


Just an additional information.
The first time I install aptitude, I uncheck the "repair packages before installing or removing" ( it's only a rough translation from French, the spelling is probably different ) so that aptitude does not repair when I go in preview mode ( the 1st 'g' ). This allows me to quickly notice what my actions are breaking, so I can decide myself "which solution" ( I never trust aptitude's ability to fix things for me, I'm faster to fix them myself ) I will use.

And, since your system is in an "intermediate" state, I would like to give you one more shortcut: "b" allows you to jump to next broken package, so that you can be able to view why it is broken, and so enter it's dedicated view by hitting "enter" ( those actions can be made through the UI, I'm simply more accustomed to shortcuts ) to inspect it. As usual, using "q" will close the screen you are looking at.

Last note: when there are packages broken with the actions you plan to do, aptitude is much slower in doing almost everything. It's "normal", do not worry ( it tries to calculate new solutions each time you do something, even if it is not a new action to take ).


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