On 06/30/2013 10:40 AM, Patrick Wiseman wrote: > On Sun, Jun 30, 2013 at 10:06 AM, Jape Person <jap...@comcast.net> wrote: >> Hi! >> >> Forgive the facetious thread title, please. I just about got knocked out of >> my >> socks this morning when I ran my daily upgrade checks in aptitude. >> >> I run Debian testing with Xfce, and I'd like to keep it that way. > > Me, too. > >> About a year ago I switched out Wicd for network-manager-gnome so that I >> could >> make use of the latter package's ability to control VPN connections. I guess >> that's the root cause of this little adventure. (However, IIRC, Xfce has >> started >> using network-manager-gnome instead of Wicd anyway.) >> >> This morning the usual upgrades included a gnome-bluetooth updgrade that >> wanted >> to pull in what appeared to be just about everything from the Gnome DE -- >> roughly 117 packages. The gnome-bluetooth package was apparently on the >> system >> because the network manager wants it there. >> >> This was easy enough to prevent. I just held everything while I got rid of >> gnome-bluetooth and its playmates, then put a forbid on gnome-bluetooth. The >> ensuing upgrade attempt was a lot more reasonable. >> >> I don't suppose this really qualifies as a bug -- particularly since >> network-manager-gnome really is a part of the Gnome DE. But I imagine a few >> folks who use it in other DEs are going to be a little consternated by >> today's >> upgrades if they don't pay fairly close attention before committing to them. >> >> Thanks for reading my tale of woe (whoa?). > > I think this happened because gnome-bluetooth recommends > gnome-control-center which in its turn depends on a bunch of stuff I > don't need (and most of which is not on my system) and recommends a > bunch more unnecessary stuff. The way I avoid what you saw this > morning is to tell aptitude NOT to install by default packages > recommended by other packages. That seems to prevent a lot of > unnecessary installations. So I recommend setting that option in > aptitude! You always have the option, after scanning what's > recommended, to install what you want. > > Patrick
That's a good point. Back when I decided to use Debian testing I decided to stick with the default aptitude setting, which -- as you have indicated -- may not be a great idea for those of us who prefer to keep things a little simpler. It does seem as though some of the recommends are a little excessive and certainly shouldn't be treated as though they were hard dependencies. I'm not sure which will result in me doing less fiddling around in aptitude -- not having recommends set to be installed by default and adding them manually as desired, or having aptitude set to install them by default and keeping a watchful eye. It's really pretty easy to spot 117 new installations with the aptitude TUI. But I often see smaller lists of new installations being brought in and might end up installing stuff I don't need if I'm not on my toes. I think I'll take your advice. This (no recommends) is the way I used to use aptitude. And you are exactly right about gnome-panel. The gnome-bluetooth package itself didn't require addition of all of the dross, but it's request for gnome-panel is what caused the landslide of recommended installations. J. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51d0497a.4050...@comcast.net
