Bug#674523: apt-get manpage: please document option --solver
Package: apt
Version: 1.3~rc1
Followup-For: Bug #674523
Control: severity -1 important
Hi, I'm bumping the severity for this because it's many years old, and it is
hiding an important feature from users.
manpages are a very common way for users to learn about new features, and I
didn't even know about external solvers until I spoke to Ralf during DebConf.
Everyone has been through the situation where their apt-get gives them a
"can't solve" error and it would be useful to let users experiment with what's
best for themselves.
These days I usually use aptitude because its dependency-solving algorithm
usually works better than apt's, especially
a) on a development machine where I have build-depends for many packages
installed at the same time, some of which sometimes conflict, or
b) on sid when I forget to upgrade for several weeks, then the packages in
the archive have moved on so much, to conflict quite badly with my system
But even aptitude sometimes fails, and using different solvers might help to
reduce the frustration of manually having to resolve these things.
X
-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
APT prefers testing
APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (300, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386
Kernel: Linux 4.6.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii adduser 3.115
ii debian-archive-keyring 2014.3
ii gpgv 1.4.20-6
ii init-system-helpers 1.42
ii libapt-pkg5.0 1.3~rc1
ii libc6 2.23-4
ii libgcc1 1:6.1.1-11
ii libstdc++6 6.1.1-11
Versions of packages apt recommends:
ii gnupg 1.4.20-6
ii gnupg2 2.1.11-7
Versions of packages apt suggests:
pn apt-doc <none>
ii aptitude 0.8.3-1
ii dpkg-dev 1.18.10
ii powermgmt-base 1.31+nmu1
ii python-apt 1.1.0~beta4
ii synaptic 0.83+b1
-- no debconf information
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