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

On Sat, Dec 02, 2006 at 01:00:14PM +0100, Florian Kulzer wrote:
On Sat, Dec 02, 2006 at 01:39:04 -0900, Ken Irving wrote:
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?

I like the "forbid-version" functionality (I run Sid and it is so much
more convenient than having to remember to remove apt pins or dpkg
holds), the interactive interface, the powerful search patterns, the
log, the convenient way to look at changelogs before downloading, and
the fact that I can fine-tune how recommendations are treated for
automatic (un)installing. I also have observed aptitude acting much
smarter in conflict resolution, for example if package "foo" gets split
into "foo" and "foo-data" in an upgrade. With apt-get this often
resulted in a "chicken-and-egg" problem since the new "foo-data" had
overlapping files with the old "foo" package and "foo" could not be
upgraded directly because the new "foo" depended on "foo-data". In such
situations I often had to break the tie manually, for example by
temporarily uninstalling "foo", with "--force" if necessary. Aptitude
solves this type of problem without user intervention by going some
clever two-step route.

(Disclaimer: I have not used apt-get in a long time; it might have
learned some new tricks since I switched to aptitude.)

Nice list, but I try not to do anything fancy like pinning or forcing or
holding, and apt-get has always seemed to work well enough. Logging is
good, but I think that was just added to apt-get. The chicken and egg
problem during major upgrades may/seems to be a reason, but apt-get has
handled those well enough in my experience, maybe with a manual two-step.

I have the impression that I can use aptitude search if it's better, but
still use apt-get to install and upgrade without conflict.

--
Ken Irving, fnkci@xxxxxxx


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