tag 268697 + patch thanks On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 08:07:30AM -0400, Daniel Burrows wrote: > The main problem is that aptitude's dist-upgrade is not terribly well > defined (neither is apt-get's dist-upgrade, if it comes to that). It > basically means "try hard to upgrade stuff, even if you have to install new > packages or remove packages", but the decisions about how to resolve > dependency problems are made by apt's dependency resolver, which is fairly > deep black magic. > > Basically what happens is that everything is marked for upgrade, and then > apt is called in to fix any remaining problems. apt is told to avoid > breaking holds and to preserve deletions. It looks like it doesn't give > instructions to preserve currently-installed packages or to preserve > upgrades, but neither does apt's dist-upgrade (there's probably a reason for > that, but if I ever knew it I've forgotten it). It's actually somewhat > obscure to me why they produce different results at all. > > So to sum up, the only way I can see to document it that doesn't get into > hairy technical details is "dist-upgrade will try harder than upgrade to > upgrade all installed packages, installing or removing packages as > necessary". aptitude's dist-upgrade has the additional feature that you can > specify extra package actions, like this: > > aptitude dist-upgrade pkg1+ pkg2- ...
Well, attached is my best effort at a patch, given the difficult situation. :) -- G. Branden Robinson | The National Security Agency is Debian GNU/Linux | working on the Fourth Amendment [EMAIL PROTECTED] | thing. http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Phil Lago, Deputy XD, CIA
diff -urN aptitude-0.2.15.9.OFFICIAL/debian/changelog
aptitude-0.2.15.9/debian/changelog
--- aptitude-0.2.15.9.OFFICIAL/debian/changelog 2005-04-19 23:40:18.366248220
-0500
+++ aptitude-0.2.15.9/debian/changelog 2005-04-20 00:15:52.206638461 -0500
@@ -1,3 +1,13 @@
+aptitude (0.2.15.9-2.1) local; urgency=low
+
+ * Local version to implement manpage patch.
+
+ * doc/en/manpage.xml: Document "dist-upgrade" command, note its
+ not-well-understood status, and advise apt-get refugees to use "upgrade"
+ instead. (Closes: #268697)
+
+ -- Branden Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Tue, 19 Apr 2005 23:41:35 -0500
+
aptitude (0.2.15.9-2) unstable; urgency=low
* Merge from upstream to svn HEAD (r2931):
diff -urN aptitude-0.2.15.9.OFFICIAL/doc/en/manpage.xml
aptitude-0.2.15.9/doc/en/manpage.xml
--- aptitude-0.2.15.9.OFFICIAL/doc/en/manpage.xml 2004-12-03
19:40:48.000000000 -0500
+++ aptitude-0.2.15.9/doc/en/manpage.xml 2005-04-20 01:20:45.994701006
-0500
@@ -269,11 +269,11 @@
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry>
- <term><literal>upgrade</literal></term>
+ <term><literal>upgrade, dist-upgrade</literal></term>
<listitem>
<para>
- Upgrades installed packages to their most recent
+ Upgrade installed packages to the most recent available
version. Installed packages will not be removed
unless they are unused (see the section <quote><link
linkend='secAutoInstall'>Managing Automatically
@@ -287,6 +287,15 @@
these constraints, it will be kept at its current
version.
</para>
+
+ <para>
+ <literal>dist-upgrade</literal> tries harder to upgrade
+ packages; <application>apt-get</application> users accustomed
+ to its <literal>dist-upgrade</literal> command will likely want
+ to use &aptitude;'s <literal>upgrade</literal> command instead;
+ see <quote><link linkend='secManBugs'>Bugs</link></quote>
+ below.
+ </para>
</listitem>
</varlistentry>
@@ -768,6 +777,15 @@
</variablelist>
</refsect1>
+ <refsect1 id='secManBugs'>
+ <title>Bugs</title>
+
+ <para><literal>dist-upgrade</literal> does not behave in a terribly
+ well-defined fashion. The decisions about how to resolve dependency
+ problems are made by &apt;'s problem resolver, which is fairly deep
+ black magic.</para>
+ </refsect1>
+
<refsect1>
<title>See Also</title>
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