Since people keep telling us that apt-get is braindead, and that aptitude does a better job, I tried that too, with similarly scary results. Since aptitude's output is more compact, I include it here.
In my experience, aptitude has its own set of problems. Alas, nothing is perfect.
Don't forget about dselect. If the APT tools are not giving you enough control then maybe dselect will, especially if you don't use the apt method for fetching packages.
- Bruce
