On 14/09/05, Katipo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Well, I don't know if he's trolling. > He comes across as someone who uses one app. and therefore nothing else > is any good. > > I've used aptitude for a couple of years now, on dial-up, go to bed on > the upgrade, wake up in the morning, and everything's done. > Solid as a rock, running an unstable, part-gnome install, nothing broken. > > Must be something wrong with me. >
That's what it seems like. Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but I think the problem here comes from the way that aptitude marks things as installed automatically (with the A symbol in interactive mode) when something is pulled in as a dependency. When you remove the original program, all it's dependencies that were automatically installed are removed as well. It's a way of minimising the cruft left on a system. Therefore if you install g-d-e and it pulls in everything for your GNOME desktop environment, then ALL the packages that it does pull in will be marked as Automatic. Therefore, if through a dependency problem, i.e. sound-juicer, the g-d-e cannot be properly upgraded, then if you remove g-d-e, all the GNOME desktop will be removed because aptitude thinks that they were only installed to satisfy the dependency. Thus you get a mess. So aptitude does work, it's just about making it work for you. Apt-get doesn't have this problem because if you install a package that pulls in dependencies, then remove the package, it doesn't remove the dependencies as well. So this is safer, but not ideal in terms of system management. Therefore, it would seem that the only option (and it makes sense if you think about it) is to mark those packages that you use as MANUALLY installed (use 'm' in interactive mode). If you do that, then you have nothing to worry about. Upgrades will work properly and all will be well. Sure, its a little bit more effort from the start, but eventually it is more practical, as you don't end up with dependencies that you don't need. The biggest problem with aptitude is not the software, but the way that it is understood to work. It is not just a front-end to apt-get. It does more stuff, and requires a slightly different mind-set. But once that is understood (which I hope I've gone some way in helping), aptitude does make sense, and will do what you want it to. Byron DISCLAIMER: What I said is just what I think and it works for me. Sometimes bad stuff happens.
