> Not really; the whole thing is presented as a problem but it doesn't show > you clearly what it's done to try to resolve it, nor does it let you > accept/reject some of those changes in "blocks". Simple example.. I > selected gnome-admin for install, and I get a conflict screen which looks > approximately as follows: > > EIOM Pri Section Package Description > _* Opt admin gnome-admin Gnome Admin Utilities (gulp and logview) > _* Opt libs libobgnome0 Objective-C - Gnome bindings > _* Opt libs libobgtk1 Objective-C - Gtk bindings > > == > > gnome-admin not installed - ; install (was: purge). Optional > gnome-admin depends on libobgnome0 (>= 1.0.40) > gnome-admin depends on libobgtk1 (>= 1.0.40) > > It shows this if the cursor bar is over gnome-admin itself. The thing is, > it's not really clearly presented to you what dselect has decided. In this > case, it's just installing 2 more packages, but even that isn't clearly > obvious, despite the flags... to say nothing if the changes had been greater > (including recommends and conflicts).
What I don't like about apt/dselect is how they treat packages locally compiled from source tarball. I couldn't find an option to really ignore dependencies and do what I say. Specifically, if I want "esound-alsa" but have compiled the ALSA drivers/libs/utils myself, neither dselect nor apt let me install it because it depends on some ALSA packages. Now, there is a [Q] option explained in the conflict resolution screen which should retain the exact state I select - only it doesn't work as expected or even deterministically. 1) It drops me back at conflict resolution, with its "suggestions" selected again 2) The main menu appears. If I select install, it wants to remove all of gnome! Perhaps I could get the deb manually and install via dpkg and a few force options, but that's hardly optimal... <whishlist> A package state that tells the package managers that "the functionality of this package is provided locally, treat it as if it was installed" An option to reset the selection status of all packages to their actual status </whishlist> Maybe I just didn't read enough docs... Christian
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