Re: Gnome 2.10 going in to etch today
From: Byron Hillis (the.metric_at_gmail.com)
Date: 09/16/05
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Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2005 09:16:06 +1000 To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
On 14/09/05, Katipo <Katipo@westnet.com.au> wrote:
> Well, I don't know if he's trolling.
> He comes across as someone who uses one app. and therefore nothing else
> is any good.
>
> I've used aptitude for a couple of years now, on dial-up, go to bed on
> the upgrade, wake up in the morning, and everything's done.
> Solid as a rock, running an unstable, part-gnome install, nothing broken.
>
> Must be something wrong with me.
>
That's what it seems like. Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but
I think the problem here comes from the way that aptitude marks things
as installed automatically (with the A symbol in interactive mode) when
something is pulled in as a dependency. When you remove the original
program, all it's dependencies that were automatically installed are
removed as well. It's a way of minimising the cruft left on a system.
Therefore if you install g-d-e and it pulls in everything for your GNOME
desktop environment, then ALL the packages that it does pull in will be
marked as Automatic. Therefore, if through a dependency problem, i.e.
sound-juicer, the g-d-e cannot be properly upgraded, then if you
remove g-d-e, all the GNOME desktop will be removed because
aptitude thinks that they were only installed to satisfy the dependency.
Thus you get a mess.
So aptitude does work, it's just about making it work for you. Apt-get
doesn't have this problem because if you install a package that pulls
in dependencies, then remove the package, it doesn't remove the
dependencies as well. So this is safer, but not ideal in terms of system
management.
Therefore, it would seem that the only option (and it makes sense if
you think about it) is to mark those packages that you use as MANUALLY
installed (use
'm' in interactive mode). If you do that, then you have nothing to
worry about. Upgrades will work properly and all will be well. Sure,
its a little bit more effort
from the start, but eventually it is more practical, as you don't end up with
dependencies that you don't need.
The biggest problem with aptitude is not the software, but the way that it
is understood to work. It is not just a front-end to apt-get. It does
more stuff,
and requires a slightly different mind-set. But once that is understood (which
I hope I've gone some way in helping), aptitude does make sense, and will
do what you want it to.
Byron
DISCLAIMER: What I said is just what I think and it works for me. Sometimes
bad stuff happens.
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