aptitude --mind-your-own-business option?



I've periodically tried using aptitude, but always get scared off
when it seems to "run away". I'm sure it knows what's best for my
machine ;-), but is it possible to override this behavior?

$ sudo aptitude install wmmoonclock -s
...
The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
groff imagemagick libconfig-inifiles-perl perlmagick python2.3 python2.3-iconvcodec
rcs texi2html weblint
The following NEW packages will be installed:
wmmoonclock
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 9 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/158kB of archives. After unpacking 21.2MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

The first time I tried this I'm afraid I didn't look "very closely" at the
REMOVED lines. Silly of me not to suspect that aptitude would choose
this time to do a clean-up of some sort, and not just install the simple
little program I asked it for.

It's odd that I can use apt-get without any hint of these problems.

Per another thread, I tried to use the "unmarkauto" command to fix things,
but apprently the need to clean things up is still there

$ sudo aptitude unmarkauto '~M!~R~i'
...
The following packages are unused and will be REMOVED:
...

I'll probably just go back to using apt-get, and probably everything
will be fine until the next time I decide to try aptitude. Is there a
compelling reason to bother?

Ken

--
Ken Irving, fnkci@xxxxxxx


--
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



Relevant Pages

  • package management begins to annoy me
    ... is only because i don't know apt-get and aptitude well enough. ... aptitude has the nice feature of marking packages that are install ... I wanted to upgrade the already installed CD ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Noob question - best way to install software
    ... I am wondering about the best way to install software. ... Aptitude is supposed to do everything that apt-get will do ... installed to meet dependencies of packages that you specifically wanted ... Since you're new to debian, I suggest you read: ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Administration (+apt-get dist-upgrade) of 100s of machines
    ... "suggested/recommends" as it installs other packages. ... Hence the "aptitude deleted all my files"-type posts ... Install Debian 4.0 "Etch". ... The Pentium running sid 173MB worth of changes: mostly KDE changing as ...
    (Debian-User)
  • after upgrade backups cause machine crash
    ... I didn't use aptitude dist-upgrade as I was going from the old testing-sarge to stable-sarge. ... In January this year, I replaced the commented out testing lines from the original install with uncommented sarge lines in sources.list, left the security one in, did an aptitude update followed by an aptitude upgrade. ... Will install 43 packages, and remove 0 packages. ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Etch status..?
    ... ones you want, they depend on packages installed, or they're cruft. ... The big difference with aptitude is that it remembers which packages you explicitly requested. ... aptitude uses the same underlying package management tools as apt-get. ... You can use switches to install without recommends ...
    (Debian-User)