On Fri, 16 Dec 2016 12:40:29 +0100
Vincent Lefevre <vinc...@vinc17.net> wrote:
> On 2016-12-07 23:45:24 +0000, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > On Wednesday 07 December 2016 14:55:40 Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > On 2016-10-13 00:09:02 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > > > On Friday 07 October 2016 15:43:17 Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > > > On 2016-10-04 22:51:34 +0100, Lisi Reisz wrote:
> > > > > > On Tuesday 04 October 2016 08:25:46 Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > > > > > my position remains the same:
> > > > > > > aptitude is poorly designed.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Fine. So don't use it. But moaning won't help anyone, not
> > > > > > even you. You don't like Aptitude. We get the message. So
> > > > > > don't use Aptitude.
> > > > >
> > > > > And what do you propose instead?
> > > >
> > > > I don't use Sid, so haven't tested out which package managers
> > > > are good for it when there are problems, but how about looking
> > > > at apt or apt-get? Ben says that he has great success with
> > > > apt-get. Apt-get is much less aggressive than aptitude - but
> > > > less fully featured.
> > > >
> > > > If I use aptitude with a large number of upgrades, I try to
> > > > break it up. At the very least I do
> > > > # aptitude update
> > > > #aptitude -s safe-upgrade
> > > > # aptitude safe-upgrade
> > > > # aptitude -s full-upgrade
> > > > # aptitude full-upgrade
> > >
> > > Sorry for the late reply, but all these may remove important
> > > packages, i.e. they have the same issues.
> >
> > Don't let them - that is the point of the -s.
>
> The -s is actually not necessary since if a package is to be removed,
> the user may still refuse. Safe, but still annoying as this requires
> a manual handling.
>
> > safe-upgrade is specifically not supposed to remove anything at all,
> > important or otherwise.
>
> Perhaps this is better now, but a few months ago:
>
> ypig:~> aptitude safe-upgrade -s
> The following packages will be REMOVED:
> gmp-ecm{u}
> 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 8 not
> upgraded.
>
> Well, the bug is now claimed to be fixed:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=819636
>
> But since, I've still had problems with the UI. One problem is that
> safe-upgrade is apparently missing from the UI.
>
> > And have you looked into apt and apt-get?
>
> They have there own issues, but mainly limitations: no UI to
> exclude individual packages from an upgrade (e.g. because of
> a serious bug), no support for frozen packages (a feature from
> aptitude).
>
Do you have X running? I use Synaptic in these situations, where it is
easy to try packages to see what can be upgraded without removals I'm
not willing to accept. On a few occasions, I have managed to hit on the
right order to do a large upgrade, and actually managed to upgrade
every package in a few passes when neither apt-get nor aptitude could do
it in one go.
--
Joe
