> > > My mileage varies. I find that the program simplifies what can be a > > > vastly more difficult process... that of tracking dependencies, versions, > > > file locations, etc, etc... It does it > > > fairly well and it does it accurately. > > Which doesn't explain why there is a project to create a better top-level > package management tool called "apt"? :)
Apt is cool for web-installs and installing something when you exactly know what package you want installed. Actually I use Slink-with-a-bit potato. I have Slink CD's. What I did is put potato-lines in my sources.list and still use the multi-CD method for dselect. Now when I want to install something slink, I use dselect, but when I want to install something potato, I use apt. > > I think the problem in dselect that it doesn't show the dependency tree. > > The listing of the packages is useful, of course, but it's just a list. > > Agreed; it's a plain list, which can be viewed in various ways. What I > think would be better would be the ability to collapse parts of the list > that you're not viewing, like a directory tree. > Then you come to the actual conflict resolution part. Possibly it'd be > great if it could detect these conflicts in real-time (I guess this might > not be trivial or speedy to implement), and prompt you. > For example, you select a package and it pops up saying "This package also > requires: foo bar baz wibble snafu... do you wish to install them as well or > cancel installation of xyz?" This lets you select/cancel the whole operation Excuse me for being puzzled here, but is this not what already happens? For example, say I want to install foo which depends on bar and baz. I'll walk to 'foo', press +, get some documentation screen that my manual advised me not to read (it'd confuse me further). I press space to send it away. Now there is a very small list with foo on top and bar and baz underneath. The lower half of the screen tells me 'foo depends on bar' and 'foo depends on baz', and before the names of bar and baz are '_*', which means that they weren't installed first but now I probably want to have them installed. So when I want the dependancies installed to, I just press enter. When I want to back out, I just make sure the '_*' turn into '__' and the '*-' (conflicting packages) turn into '**' again, and press enter. This takes a little getting-used-to, but it isn't _that_ hard imo? I just remember + means install, - means remove, _ means purge and 'enter' means 'OK it's right this way'. And 'damn-this-isn't-what-I-meant' is Ctrl-C. It could be better, but dselect just works fine for me. Arnout [EMAIL PROTECTED]
