lee <l...@yun.yagibdah.de>: > > I'm trying to upgrade my testing installation, but aptitude keeps yelp > in its current state, claiming that upgrading yelp would break a > dependency with gman. But gman is not even installed. > > When I mark yelp as upgradeable, it says that it would break > scrollkeeper. So I tell it to purge scrollkeeper, but it again says it > breaks some dependencies: > [snip] > Now I don't need those packages, but when I mark them to be purged and > press g, aptitude says it wants to install rarian-compat and to keep > above packages, except for synaptic, at their current state. Now when > looking at the list what it is going to do, it doesn't say it will > keep these packages in their current states. Instead, it will remove > scrollkeeper, ugrade 66 packages (including yelp) and install 3 new > ones to satisfy dependencies. > > Why is this so confusing? Why does it say it will keep some packages > in their states but then doesn't say that it will do that? It doesn't > mention the packages it said to keep in their states at all now. > > Aptitude always acts so weird :( What's the problem with it? Dselect > always just did what I wanted it to do.
I've always suspected that apt/aptitude's not at fault. I seldom run into this stuff, I suspect, by simply eschewing Gnome/KDE/CUPS/... That's where the complexity comes in. Even xfce displays this fragility in recent tests. I almost called one of my users a liar the other day when I couldn't believe what he was telling me. Sure enough, he was right (no "Username:" or "Password:" displayed in the *DM login prompt). I do a minimal install, then drag in only the stuff I want (fluxbox, emacs, mutt, slrn, bogofilter, afio, ...). It takes some time the first time, but take notes and it's faster than the automated way subsequently. -- Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. (*) http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292 - - http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html Please, don't Cc: me. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
