On Tue, Nov 28, 2006 at 04:13:27PM -0800, Arlie Stephens wrote: > Hi Folks, > > It appears that there are a lot of tools for managing packages and > dependencies on debian - dpkg, apt-get, aptitude, synaptic, ????. > To what extent do these tools understand the same data, i.e. to what > extent can one mix and match between them? > > I notice some confusion (someone else's question) about which are the > 'official' or favored method in debian - but my confusion is even more > fundamental. To what extent is it safe to follow people's > recomendations, when one person habitually uses apt-get, another > mentions aptitude, etc. etc.? > > Related to this, I've a problem specific to a combination of aptitude > and my employer's internal servers. (We've got mirrors of several > linux distros, with company "value add", which I'm expected to use > rather than the official distributions.) The people maintaining these > sites don't seem to use aptitude at all, and I think they've broken > something, because aptitude always tells me that most upgradeable > packages are "held" at some current, lower version. (They claim > not to have done this on purpose, which was my first guess, since I > can imagine them wanting to test and officially 'bless' new versions.) > Any idea what they could have done, and how I could work around it? > (I don't think it's debian itself, because my home system - which uses > the official sites - doesn't have any such problem.) > > Perhaps what I really need is some kind of FAQ for coping with the > large number of package management options and their confusing > interrelationships. Does any such thing exist?
All the various programs that you find confusing are just different user-interface programs that all work with a single packaging system. If a package is in the Debian repository, and if it can't be installed by using any one of the user-interface programs, then there is a bug in the package that needs to be reported to the Debian bug tracking system. Different people have different priorities as to what is important in the twisty turnies of program management. For me, I listen to the discussion. I try to avoid the program whose advocates shout the loudest. YMMV ;-) -- Paul E Condon [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
