on Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 11:15:37AM -0600, Brian McGroarty ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > > Humor me; I think I'm missing something and it's got me curious. > > > In discussions about dealing with .deb packages, apt* and dpkg are > mentioned almost universally. > > It's always been my habit to use dselect for basic installation and > removal, leaning on apt* and dpkg for troubleshooting and extended > information gathering. > > The differentiation seems to be akin to using mutt versus piping > things to /usr/bin/mail - you can do most basic tasks in both places, > but mutt's presentation makes for quick work. > > > Why so much apt and dpkg and so little dselect?
I use and actually kinda like dselect in a sick kind of a way. But it
took me a while to get there.
Con:
- Presenting a noncollapsible list of 4k packages is Just Plain
Wrong[tm]. Incidentally, capt repeats this mistake, though it's
possible to filter packages.
- dselect's update is (or wasn't) quite synched with apt, which
means/meant that a seperate [U]pdate step is/was required. This can
be time-consuming on a <= 56K line.
- Key bindings and dependency resolution can be confusing.
Pro:
- dselect (as Joey Hess pointed out to me recently) is about the only
convenient way to find out about recently added packages.
- dselect's dependency resolution deals with 'recommends' as well as
'requires'
- ordering of packages in dselect, while somewhat byzantine, also does
fulfill a useful rôle.
These days, I tend to use apt-get, dpkg, apt-cache, and capt, but I'll
still roll through dselect on the odd instance.
--
Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
Evangelist, Zelerate, Inc. http://www.zelerate.org
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand? There is no K5 cabal
http://gestalt-system.sourceforge.net/ http://www.kuro5hin.org
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