Re: Maze of Twisty Turny Little Package Managers

On Sat, Dec 02, 2006 at 06:38:45AM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
On 11/30/06 10:50, Ralph Katz wrote:
On 11/29/2006 08:50 PM, Osamu Aoki wrote:
[snip]
On 11/17/2006 01:30 PM, Russell L. Harris wrote:
Meanwhile, Debian installs "synaptic" by default. Use synaptic
instead of aptitude.

RLH

Au contraire... The docs are quite explicit about this: use *aptitude*.

http://www.debian.org/releases/etch/i386/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html
4.4 Upgrading packages

The recommended way to upgrade from previous Debian GNU/Linux releases
is to use the package management tool aptitude. This program makes safer
decisions about package installations than running apt-get directly.

4.4.2 Upgrading aptitude

Upgrade tests have shown that etch's version of aptitude is better at
solving the complex dependencies during an upgrade than either apt-get
or sarge's aptitude. It should therefore be upgraded first [...]

Aptitude is very aggressive and usually wrong about removing other
"unneeded" apps when you remove one app. Maybe this only happens
when you start out using apt-get, but is nonetheless very
aggravating and disconcerting. Thus, I stick with apt-get.

I understand your feeling. I have been hit several times before with
this. That is very true if you are using woody and sarge version.

That is why I recommend to do partial upgrade aptitude alone first which
will pull some key libraries such as libc.

This is:
"apt-get install aptitude"
or
"aptitude install aptitude"

New etch aptitude has resolver in visual mode.
Give it a try when you find time.

Osamu


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

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Is apt-get still the cool package installer?
    ... I'll look into aptitude and synaptic. ... it can't even find the package at all. ... Now it wants me to 'apt-get autoremove' telling me that "The ... To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-REQUEST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: "Hold"ing non-installed packages
    ... to tell dist-upgrade not to upgrade that package for the time being. ... good as or better than the one from apt-get, in practice doing so often seems to ... aptitude is a bad idea, and it's just easier for me to avoid aptitude entirely. ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: networking problem with 2.6.4 kernel [was: Re: 2.6.4 kernel install wants to remove current kern
    ... > apt's sources list, and you run aptitude, then aptitude wants to ... > upgrade your system to sarge. ... > choosing to upgrade a package unless Auto-Upgrade chose to upgrade it) ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Serious aptitude upgrade problem
    ... I think I am running into a serious upgrade problem. ... aptitude -d upgrade ... In the meantime I got another package to install but all previously ... Reading state information... ...
    (Debian-User)
  • Re: Is apt-get still the cool package installer?
    ... software install tool that doesn't require a mouse, ... the interactive resolver for aptitude probably won't be rolled into ... apt-get and it may be the best way to deal with complex dependency issues. ... "Note that aptitude is the preferred program for package management ...
    (Debian-User)