Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
[Andreas Beckmann] Looks like we should start doing some automated upgrade tests with aptitude ... jenkins.debian.net would be one solution, piuparts another (anybody who wants to write a patch?). A few years ago I did chroot upgrade tests like the one done by jenkins.debian.net, using both apt-get and aptitude, to get a list of differences. The differences were huge, and to me it seemed that both of them failed and succeeded some times. I guess what we really want to is to both test upgrades with apt-get and aptitude chroots, and compare them to the result we get by asking tasksel to install the original task. After all, we want to make sure upgrades and installations end up with almost the same setup. If you want to create such chroot test with jenkins, I am sure Holger welcome a patch. The chroot scripts are simple to extend. :) -- Happy hacking Petter Reinholdtsen -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/2flli8k9q32@login2.uio.no
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
Aptitude installs all recommended packages by default which was rather annoying until I found that in the options menu as I ran out of space a couple of times. as does apt-get. I'm fairly sure synaptic doesn't select recommended by default, however the synaptic package itself is a package where installing recommended packages by default may be a good idea (Adds useful repo management functionality like add cdrom (which isn't obvious from the dependency descriptions) without pulling in the world). My bad it is, I just use a machine where I can't remember changing that in years and boy am I glad. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) ___ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/554498.15807...@smtp112.mail.ird.yahoo.com
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
For instance, one of the (ugly) boxes I help admin recently had 1000 pacakges yet to update and 60 security packages not done, and not enough space on the box to do them. Aptitude installs all recommended packages by default which was rather annoying until I found that in the options menu as I ran out of space a couple of times. p.s. Have the devs considered using an _apt user for doing the downloads. Should only take a couple of minutes to add. You may want an advisory to warn users to check their firewall rules however. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) ___ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/606292.93451...@smtp145.mail.ird.yahoo.com
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On 2013-04-09 11:05, Kevin Chadwick wrote: Aptitude installs all recommended packages by default which was rather annoying until I found that in the options menu as I ran out of space a couple of times. as does apt-get. -- brother http://sis.bthstudent.se -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/5163db33.40...@bsnet.se
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
+++ Chow Loong Jin [2013-04-09 09:32 +0800]: On 09/04/2013 06:43, Adam Borowski wrote: On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:19:19AM +0800, Chow Loong Jin wrote: Actually, in the event of aptitude not being able to resolve the dependencies satisfactorily the first round (from aptitude install foo), aptitude allows you to interactively pick other solutions, or tell it what to do: Have you been able to get that effect from aptitude? It seems that whenever it sees some trouble (sometimes even when plain apt-get would succeed), it proposes to remove the world, install a few unrelated packages, and not do whatever you requested it to. After declining a varying number of such solutions, it gives up even if it would take a single action to resolve the problem. Yeah, I have actually. It's just that the recent multiarch issues (which still haven't been fixed) tend to lead to aptitude attempting to remove the whole (foreign-arch) world. I too am a huge aptitude fan. The curses UI is brilliant for working out what's up when things are a bit broken. However it doesn't deal with multiarch well so I've been stuck with apt-get trying to work out fro the tealeaves what's wrong. Is anyone actually working on making the aptitude multiarch-friendly, or planning to? Or has at least tthought about how hard a problem it is? Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM http://wookware.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130409112909.gg2...@stoneboat.aleph1.co.uk
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
Le mardi 9 avril 2013 13:29:09, Wookey a écrit : I too am a huge aptitude fan. The curses UI is brilliant for working out what's up when things are a bit broken. However it doesn't deal with multiarch well so I've been stuck with apt-get trying to work out fro the tealeaves what's wrong. Is anyone actually working on making the aptitude multiarch-friendly, or planning to? Or has at least tthought about how hard a problem it is? I had the problem for a few month when I enabled multiarch but then things went fine again after the upload of aptitude 0.6.8.1-1 and its set of multiarch-related bug fix (Debian #672340, LP #831768 and LP #968412). Wookey Best regards, Thomas signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part.
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 12:29:09PM +0100, Wookey wrote: [cut] I too am a huge aptitude fan. The curses UI is brilliant for working out what's up when things are a bit broken. However it doesn't deal with multiarch well so I've been stuck with apt-get trying to work out fro the tealeaves what's wrong. Is anyone actually working on making the aptitude multiarch-friendly, or planning to? Or has at least tthought about how hard a problem it is? My understanding was that aptitude lagged behind in its support for multiarch, but that it has got much better in recent versions. See the bugs closed here[1], for example. [1] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?archive=both;include=subject%3Amultiarch;dist=unstable;package=aptitude Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM http://wookware.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130409112909.gg2...@stoneboat.aleph1.co.uk signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On Tue, Apr 9, 2013 at 7:29 PM, Wookey wrote: Is anyone actually working on making the aptitude multiarch-friendly, or planning to? It appears so, see the bottom of this mail: http://lists.debian.org/deity/2013/04/msg00027.html -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAKTje6EBbM4Zp-rNK_b=eyfoqc3zyv9olvlzncfpmkbybjq...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
Hi, Le Mon, Apr 08, 2013 at 06:02:27PM +0300, Eugene Lychauka a écrit : http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.html#pkgmgmt Here we can read: The preferred program for interactive package management from a terminal is aptitude. For a non-interactive command line interface for package management, it is recommended to use apt-get. What is meant by interactive interface and non-interactive interface here? I understand it as typing aptitude install foo is non-interactive interface, and the text-user interface of aptitude launched by typing aptitude is interactive interface. Am I right? You are right. Some people assure me that not. Who are they and what are they telling? On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 07:40:22AM +0900, Charles Plessy wrote: The same text is found in Squeeze and Lenny's release notes, at the What's new in the distribution? chapter. Have you considered to propose to the maintainers of the release notes to delete that part completely if you thing it is confusing, since it brings no new information at all ? At one point we recommended aptitude for everything. Since it caused some trouble in 2010, we settled for this new text quoted in the above. See http://bugs.debian.org/411280 It was fixed to be in current text in 2010 as I recall. So this text is from Sarge I think. The essence of this long bug discussion can be summarized: Steve Langasek wrote in 2010 http://bugs.debian.org/411280#35 I think it's clear that the behavior of aptitude in releases after etch has not been stable and predictable enough for us to recommend it in the release notes as a non-interactive upgrade interface. I will submit a patch to the release notes to address this. Osamu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130409154725.GB15352@goofy.localdomain
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
Hi, On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 09:32:52AM +0800, Chow Loong Jin wrote: On 09/04/2013 06:43, Adam Borowski wrote: On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:19:19AM +0800, Chow Loong Jin wrote: Actually, in the event of aptitude not being able to resolve the dependencies satisfactorily the first round (from aptitude install foo), aptitude allows you to interactively pick other solutions, or tell it what to do: Have you been able to get that effect from aptitude? It seems that whenever it sees some trouble (sometimes even when plain apt-get would succeed), it proposes to remove the world, install a few unrelated packages, and not do whatever you requested it to. After declining a varying number of such solutions, it gives up even if it would take a single action to resolve the problem. Yeah, I have actually. It's just that the recent multiarch issues (which still haven't been fixed) tend to lead to aptitude attempting to remove the whole (foreign-arch) world. If none of the other decisions make sense, you're actually able to prod aptitude in the right direction by supplying some extra operations interactively at the [Y|n|q] prompt. I'm not sure if it makes sense to recommend aptitude in its present state. I wouldn't recommend it when operating with multiarch enabled. Otherwise it's mostly fine. Yes but it is not that bad. I was also shocked to see: * denial of downgrade request as the first suggestion * massive package removal as the second suggestion I will be very careful when managing multiarch package with some strict version dependency aptitude. It seems we need to mark both archs simultaneously when we do not-so-common thing such as downgrade. (Also some version selection result seems not to be updated in display but effective internally. I still do not understand what aptitude is doing ... vey strange) It was libboost causing bug for the last release and this time multiarch. So we should keep this text this time again. Osamu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130409155731.GC15352@goofy.localdomain
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On 04/09/2013 11:57 AM, Osamu Aoki wrote: Hi, On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 09:32:52AM +0800, Chow Loong Jin wrote: On 09/04/2013 06:43, Adam Borowski wrote: Have you been able to get that effect from aptitude? It seems that whenever it sees some trouble (sometimes even when plain apt-get would succeed), it proposes to remove the world, install a few unrelated packages, and not do whatever you requested it to. After declining a varying number of such solutions, it gives up even if it would take a single action to resolve the problem. Yeah, I have actually. It's just that the recent multiarch issues (which still haven't been fixed) tend to lead to aptitude attempting to remove the whole (foreign-arch) world. If none of the other decisions make sense, you're actually able to prod aptitude in the right direction by supplying some extra operations interactively at the [Y|n|q] prompt. I'm not sure if it makes sense to recommend aptitude in its present state. I wouldn't recommend it when operating with multiarch enabled. Otherwise it's mostly fine. Yes but it is not that bad. I was also shocked to see: * denial of downgrade request as the first suggestion * massive package removal as the second suggestion I've seen behaviors approximating this from aptitude even without multiarch - indeed, from years before multiarch was even proposed AFAIK. It's precisely that sort of thing that leads me to use apt-get over aptitude almost exclusively. When going through a dozen or more - or several dozen - suggested resolutions which don't even come close to achieving what I requested on the command line (and often seem to be getting progressively further away from it, at that) is more the rule than the exception for aptitude, but apt-get seems to consistently find a suitable resolution on the first try, it seems to me that something is wrong with the aptitude resolver. apt-get's dependency resolver may be less smart than that of aptitude, but it also seems to fail less stupidly. Since last I heard mixing and matching between the two is not encouraged (though I don't know why not), and since dealing with the limitations of apt-get is far less aggravating for me than dealing with the attempted cleverness of aptitude, I find the older program by far the more preferable solution. -- The Wanderer Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any side of it. Every time you let somebody set a limit they start moving it. - LiveJournal user antonia_tiger -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51643da4.9050...@fastmail.fm
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On 2013-04-09 17:57, Osamu Aoki wrote: [...] I'm not sure if it makes sense to recommend aptitude in its present state. I wouldn't recommend it when operating with multiarch enabled. Otherwise it's mostly fine. Looks like we should start doing some automated upgrade tests with aptitude ... jenkins.debian.net would be one solution, piuparts another (anybody who wants to write a patch?). Andreas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51643e90.3040...@debian.org
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
Aptitude installs all recommended packages by default which was rather annoying until I found that in the options menu as I ran out of space a couple of times. as does apt-get. I'm fairly sure synaptic doesn't select recommended by default, however the synaptic package itself is a package where installing recommended packages by default may be a good idea (Adds useful repo management functionality like add cdrom (which isn't obvious from the dependency descriptions) without pulling in the world). -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) ___ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/827742.38594...@smtp104.mail.ird.yahoo.com
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 06:15:12PM +0200, Andreas Beckmann wrote: On 2013-04-09 17:57, Osamu Aoki wrote: [...] I'm not sure if it makes sense to recommend aptitude in its present state. I wouldn't recommend it when operating with multiarch enabled. Otherwise it's mostly fine. Looks like we should start doing some automated upgrade tests with aptitude ... jenkins.debian.net would be one solution, piuparts another (anybody who wants to write a patch?). That sounds like a waste of time to me unless someone is first going to fix aptitude's resolver to not propose solutions that *directly contradict what the user requested on the commandline*. http://bugs.debian.org/661678 -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Interactive package management via aptitude
http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.html#pkgmgmt Here we can read: The preferred program for interactive package management from a terminal is aptitude. For a non-interactive command line interface for package management, it is recommended to use apt-get. What is meant by interactive interface and non-interactive interface here? I understand it as typing aptitude install foo is non-interactive interface, and the text-user interface of aptitude launched by typing aptitude is interactive interface. Am I right? Some people assure me that not. Thank you, Eugene -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAALuUm+yWVms9byd+cmb-zewRHXpq=XNVWG41RaB4cZx_an=q...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On Monday, April 08, 2013 11:02:27, Eugene Lychauka wrote: http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.htm l#pkgmgmt Here we can read: The preferred program for interactive package management from a terminal is aptitude. For a non-interactive command line interface for package management, it is recommended to use apt-get. What is meant by interactive interface and non-interactive interface here? I understand it as typing aptitude install foo is non-interactive interface, and the text-user interface of aptitude launched by typing aptitude is interactive interface. Am I right? Yes. aptitude has an interactive interface available, apt-get does not. I think the point of the note in the release-notes is to point users to aptitude for an interactive terminal package manager, rather than dselect. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle chris.kna...@coredump.us GPG Key: 4096R/0x1E759A726A9FDD74 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201304081133.51858.chris.kna...@coredump.us
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On 08/04/2013 23:02, Eugene Lychauka wrote: http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.html#pkgmgmt Here we can read: The preferred program for interactive package management from a terminal is aptitude. For a non-interactive command line interface for package management, it is recommended to use apt-get. What is meant by interactive interface and non-interactive interface here? I understand it as typing aptitude install foo is non-interactive interface, and the text-user interface of aptitude launched by typing aptitude is interactive interface. Am I right? Some people assure me that not. Actually, in the event of aptitude not being able to resolve the dependencies satisfactorily the first round (from aptitude install foo), aptitude allows you to interactively pick other solutions, or tell it what to do: -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
Le Mon, Apr 08, 2013 at 06:02:27PM +0300, Eugene Lychauka a écrit : http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/amd64/release-notes/ch-whats-new.html#pkgmgmt Here we can read: The preferred program for interactive package management from a terminal is aptitude. For a non-interactive command line interface for package management, it is recommended to use apt-get. What is meant by interactive interface and non-interactive interface here? I understand it as typing aptitude install foo is non-interactive interface, and the text-user interface of aptitude launched by typing aptitude is interactive interface. Am I right? Some people assure me that not. Hi Eugene, The same text is found in Squeeze and Lenny's release notes, at the What's new in the distribution? chapter. Have you considered to propose to the maintainers of the release notes to delete that part completely if you thing it is confusing, since it brings no new information at all ? Cheers, -- Charles Plessy Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130408224022.ga27...@falafel.plessy.net
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:19:19AM +0800, Chow Loong Jin wrote: Actually, in the event of aptitude not being able to resolve the dependencies satisfactorily the first round (from aptitude install foo), aptitude allows you to interactively pick other solutions, or tell it what to do: Have you been able to get that effect from aptitude? It seems that whenever it sees some trouble (sometimes even when plain apt-get would succeed), it proposes to remove the world, install a few unrelated packages, and not do whatever you requested it to. After declining a varying number of such solutions, it gives up even if it would take a single action to resolve the problem. I'm not sure if it makes sense to recommend aptitude in its present state. -- ᛊᚨᚾᛁᛏᚣ᛫ᛁᛊ᛫ᚠᛟᚱ᛫ᚦᛖ᛫ᚹᛖᚨᚲ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20130408224306.ga7...@angband.pl
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
Adam Borowski kilob...@angband.pl writes: On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:19:19AM +0800, Chow Loong Jin wrote: Actually, in the event of aptitude not being able to resolve the dependencies satisfactorily the first round (from aptitude install foo), aptitude allows you to interactively pick other solutions, or tell it what to do: Have you been able to get that effect from aptitude? It seems that whenever it sees some trouble (sometimes even when plain apt-get would succeed), it proposes to remove the world, install a few unrelated packages, and not do whatever you requested it to. After declining a varying number of such solutions, it gives up even if it would take a single action to resolve the problem. That's not my experience. The first suggestion is sometimes wrong, but usually if there is a valid approach (and sometimes there isn't), the right solution will be in the first three, or more rarely in the first five. I use this functionality all the time, quite happily. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87a9p81ucy@windlord.stanford.edu
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On 09/04/2013 06:43, Adam Borowski wrote: On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:19:19AM +0800, Chow Loong Jin wrote: Actually, in the event of aptitude not being able to resolve the dependencies satisfactorily the first round (from aptitude install foo), aptitude allows you to interactively pick other solutions, or tell it what to do: Have you been able to get that effect from aptitude? It seems that whenever it sees some trouble (sometimes even when plain apt-get would succeed), it proposes to remove the world, install a few unrelated packages, and not do whatever you requested it to. After declining a varying number of such solutions, it gives up even if it would take a single action to resolve the problem. Yeah, I have actually. It's just that the recent multiarch issues (which still haven't been fixed) tend to lead to aptitude attempting to remove the whole (foreign-arch) world. If none of the other decisions make sense, you're actually able to prod aptitude in the right direction by supplying some extra operations interactively at the [Y|n|q] prompt. I'm not sure if it makes sense to recommend aptitude in its present state. I wouldn't recommend it when operating with multiarch enabled. Otherwise it's mostly fine. -- Kind regards, Loong Jin signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Interactive package management via aptitude
On Monday, April 08, 2013 18:43:06, Adam Borowski wrote: On Tue, Apr 09, 2013 at 04:19:19AM +0800, Chow Loong Jin wrote: Actually, in the event of aptitude not being able to resolve the dependencies satisfactorily the first round (from aptitude install foo), aptitude allows you to interactively pick other solutions, or tell it what to do: Have you been able to get that effect from aptitude? It seems that whenever it sees some trouble (sometimes even when plain apt-get would succeed), it proposes to remove the world, install a few unrelated packages, and not do whatever you requested it to. After declining a varying number of such solutions, it gives up even if it would take a single action to resolve the problem. I occasionally see behavior along these lines. Often you can step through the solutions with . and get to a reasonable solution, but sometimes it still doesn't get to one after (slowly) skipping through a hundred choices, with an unknown number of choices to go. At that point it's obvious you need to do something else. The typical place I see this are on Debian boxes in an abominable state that have lots of updates still not done, and have been customized and have several pacakges on hold. For instance, one of the (ugly) boxes I help admin recently had 1000 pacakges yet to update and 60 security packages not done, and not enough space on the box to do them. Things like that can drive the aptitude package resolver crazy. Usually the best option is to do upgrades in smaller, simpler steps that the resolver can tolerate. i.e. the divide and conquer technique. Sometimes I find that old config files left behind also bothers the resolver (i.e. packages removed but not purged) -- purging those helps. [The aptitude docs explain how to do this search.] Even with this, aptitude is still my favorite package manager and I use it almost exclusively. Note that there are command line options concerning the resolver with aptitude, and with options like --allow-new-upgrades and --allow-new-installs, or --full-resolver, etc... some of these may help what you're running into. I don't use these because I do the divide and conquer appraoch, thus manually making things simpler for the resolver myself. I'm not sure if it makes sense to recommend aptitude in its present state. I don't personally feel this way, but I can understand why you do. It can sometimes be tricky to work around package conflicts. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle chris.kna...@coredump.us GPG Key: 4096R/0x1E759A726A9FDD74 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/201304082144.52121.chris.kna...@coredump.us
