Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
Quoting Henrique de Moraes Holschuh (2015-04-02 21:52:50) In this era of wider displays (even text-mode), it would make a lot of sense to change its default display filter to include the archive by default. FWIW, here's the display format I use in aptitude (changeable through the Options|Preferences menu, item The display format for pacakge views): %c%a%M%S %p %Z %20v %20V %10t Try that, tune the two 20 and the 10 to something that fits well the width of your text terminal. I use this instead, which IMO adapts nicely also to narrow screens: %c%a%M%S %p %t %Z %v %V I.e. only change from default is adding the zuite before versions. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private signature.asc Description: signature
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Ma, 31 mar 15, 17:29:25, Andrew Shadura wrote:
Hi,
On 31 March 2015 at 17:00, Matt Zagrabelny mzagr...@d.umn.edu wrote:
I've grepped debian-devel, but cannot find an email that was sent to
the list some months ago about tweaks to /etc/apt/apt.conf (IIRC) to
make aptitude behave more sanely.
Thus, I believe there are a couple of knobs to turn to make aptitude
behave more expectedly.
Here is it:
$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00dontbeanidiot
Aptitude::ProblemResolver {
SolutionCost priority, removals, canceled-actions;
}
I've had good experience on sid with:
$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99local-aptitude-no-removals
// tweak Aptitude to not suggest removals as first option
Aptitude::ProblemResolver::SolutionCost removals;
See #570377 for more information.
Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Wed, Apr 1, 2015, at 16:43, The Wanderer wrote: On 04/01/2015 at 12:02 PM, Peter Samuelson wrote: That sounds like you believe aptitude has only a command-line interface. I was indeed only aware of its command-line interface, until just yesterday; comments in this thread mentioning a curses interface led me to experiment, and discover how to invoke that. Yeah, well, the interactive windowed-text-mode (curses) interface is why I consider aptitude the Debian package manager, although you can probably get access to all of its functionality from the command line. There was also a GTK-based GUI mode, but I never tried it and I don't know if it still exists. I should have written interactive text mode instead of CLI in my first reply to this thread. When I looked at the resulting thread a few hours later, there wasn't any real reason to reply as others had already made all good for-and-against points for aptitude ;-) The subtle window interface of aptitude's interactive mode might cause a lot of confusion at first, so first-time users really should read the aptitude manual. Since I nearly always use the interactive mode, I never really bothered much with the quirks of the aptitude dependency solver: after what feels like more than a decade of using it, I don't even notice anymore that I skipped to the second or third suggestion before hitting G (go). That would explain my blind side to its idiotic first solution choices, to the point I didn't even bother to try to configure it to be less bloodthirsty. The truth is that way too many of us got introduced to aptitude _a very long time ago_ when it first became a viable alternative to dselect. It is simply impossible to describe the kind of permanent impression aptitude made when it delivered us (old-timer DDs and Debian users) from dselect. We don't even consider people might not know about it or how to use it :-( so it really ought to get some new blood to enhance the docs, add first-time-user landing pages, etc. aptitude needs some love to update its defaults at the very least, that's for sure. If I recall correctly, my original question was about a replacement for 'apt-cache policy', which is about the single most common thing I use apt-cache for - with show and search being probably second and third place, respectively. I have been unable to identify any aptitude analog for that functionality. aptitude lets you search on it (?archive(archive), such as unstable/stable/wheezy/proposed-updates...), and you can configure it to show a column with the archive of a package, not just its version. And it will list all available versions of a package and which archive they come from if you select a package from the list. In this era of wider displays (even text-mode), it would make a lot of sense to change its default display filter to include the archive by default. FWIW, here's the display format I use in aptitude (changeable through the Options|Preferences menu, item The display format for pacakge views): %c%a%M%S %p %Z %20v %20V %10t Try that, tune the two 20 and the 10 to something that fits well the width of your text terminal. -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique de Moraes Holschuh h...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1428004370.2487178.248688857.341e9...@webmail.messagingengine.com
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
[The Wanderer] it is IMO not viable for actual use - except perhaps by people who already know completely what they are doing and how to override aptitude's suggestions. That sounds like you believe aptitude has only a command-line interface. Mostly I use its full-screen interface. (To see this interface, launch it with no arguments.) What would you suggest as a replacement for that? dselect? I did use dselect for many years, only reluctantly switching to aptitude, but I have no desire to go back. Does aptitude include an equivalently functional analog for apt-cache? Well, the things I use most - the 'show' and 'search' functions - are certainly in aptitude, but apt-cache has a dozen other subcommands and I don't know whether aptitude implements those in some way. I'd been told that apt-get was deprecated in favor of aptitude and I'd seen that aptitude did not seem to have equivalents for the apt-cache commands. Deprecating /usr/bin/apt-get is not the same as deprecating the whole apt package, including /usr/bin/apt-cache. If anyone said the entire apt package was deprecated, I think they were misinformed. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150401160242.ga4...@p12n.org
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
The Wanderer wande...@fastmail.fm writes: I remember, years ago, I asked on some Debian list what the intended replacement for apt-cache was, since I'd been told that apt-get was deprecated in favor of aptitude and I'd seen that aptitude did not seem to have equivalents for the apt-cache commands. For a while, we were recommending people use aptitude for upgrades instead of apt-get because the dependency resolver did a better job. That's probably where the deprecated part came from, as that recommendation did get reported that way. However, time marches on, and the apt-get resolver has gotten better. I think both programs have their place. Personally, I'd recommend the apt tool for command-line package installation because I think its defaults are safer and less confusing. But it has no equivalent to aptitude for a curses-based examination of the packages on the system and new packages now available, which is a rather nice feature. In terms of dependency resolvers, I think a reasonably fair way to characterize them is that apt-get errs on the side of caution and can default to refusing to do anything, whereas aptitude tries a lot harder to find a dependency solution that changes the system at the cost of generating a lot of bogus solutions. My personal experience is that, when I have a difficult or complex dependency issue on a system, the *second* solution offered by aptitude is usually better than the only solution offered by apt-get (mostly because apt-get usually gives up), but the *first* solution offered by aptitude is usually awful and sometimes actually destructive. I always found that pattern strange and kind of amusing, but it's surprising how reliable run aptitude and take the second thing it suggests is in resolving weird dependency problems. -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/871tk3eqa5@hope.eyrie.org
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
(Sorry for the delay in replying; I had a response within minutes, but I've been having bizarre Internet-access issues all day, and I'm not even sure they're gone yet.) On 04/01/2015 at 12:02 PM, Peter Samuelson wrote: [The Wanderer] it is IMO not viable for actual use - except perhaps by people who already know completely what they are doing and how to override aptitude's suggestions. That sounds like you believe aptitude has only a command-line interface. I was indeed only aware of its command-line interface, until just yesterday; comments in this thread mentioning a curses interface led me to experiment, and discover how to invoke that. So far as I recall, no documentation or other explanations which I've ever run across have so much as mentioned this interface, much less explained how to invoke it or described doing anything through it. The man page does not mention the term 'curses', and 'interactive' - which is the only other obvious term I can think of to search for when looking for something like this mode, even knowing that such a mode exists - could just as easily describe the does this dependency solution look good to you? mode of operation. I have yet to do much of anything with that interface, so I'm not currently competent to speak about it one way or another. Does aptitude include an equivalently functional analog for apt-cache? Well, the things I use most - the 'show' and 'search' functions - are certainly in aptitude, but apt-cache has a dozen other subcommands and I don't know whether aptitude implements those in some way. If I recall correctly, my original question was about a replacement for 'apt-cache policy', which is about the single most common thing I use apt-cache for - with show and search being probably second and third place, respectively. I have been unable to identify any aptitude analog for that functionality. I'd been told that apt-get was deprecated in favor of aptitude and I'd seen that aptitude did not seem to have equivalents for the apt-cache commands. Deprecating /usr/bin/apt-get is not the same as deprecating the whole apt package, including /usr/bin/apt-cache. If anyone said the entire apt package was deprecated, I think they were misinformed. Having thought on it further, I believe what I'd actually been told at the time was that apt-get (or some other term, referring to that entire collection of tools) was no longer maintained and/or no longer developed, and that any new features etc. would go exclusively into aptitude, and that using apt-* was therefore not recommended. This would have been... sometime prior to either lenny or etch, I don't recall which. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
2015-04-01 20:43 The Wanderer: (Sorry for the delay in replying; I had a response within minutes, but I've been having bizarre Internet-access issues all day, and I'm not even sure they're gone yet.) On 04/01/2015 at 12:02 PM, Peter Samuelson wrote: [The Wanderer] it is IMO not viable for actual use - except perhaps by people who already know completely what they are doing and how to override aptitude's suggestions. That sounds like you believe aptitude has only a command-line interface. I was indeed only aware of its command-line interface, until just yesterday; comments in this thread mentioning a curses interface led me to experiment, and discover how to invoke that. So far as I recall, no documentation or other explanations which I've ever run across have so much as mentioned this interface, much less explained how to invoke it or described doing anything through it. The man page does not mention the term 'curses', and 'interactive' - which is the only other obvious term I can think of to search for when looking for something like this mode, even knowing that such a mode exists - could just as easily describe the does this dependency solution look good to you? mode of operation. I have yet to do much of anything with that interface, so I'm not currently competent to speak about it one way or another. For learning more about the possibilities of aptitude, the user manual is quite good, actually (with screenshots of different screens, explanations about search filters, etc). http://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/ Axel uploaded it there, but you can also install it locally, in english (aptitude-doc-en) and other languages. Does aptitude include an equivalently functional analog for apt-cache? Well, the things I use most - the 'show' and 'search' functions - are certainly in aptitude, but apt-cache has a dozen other subcommands and I don't know whether aptitude implements those in some way. If I recall correctly, my original question was about a replacement for 'apt-cache policy', which is about the single most common thing I use apt-cache for - with show and search being probably second and third place, respectively. I have been unable to identify any aptitude analog for that functionality. The search and other commands that accept the same filters and presentation options (like versions) allow a very rich query system and possibilities of customisation in the presentation -- although there are some bugs and not all fields are implemented/documented (like the URL of the repo). The examples below show similar info to the apt-cache policy mode, in command line. (output slightly edited for width and so on) = $ apt-cache policy subversion subversion: Installed: 1.8.10-5 Candidate: 1.8.10-6 Version table: 1.8.10-6 0 500 http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages *** 1.8.10-5 0 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status = $ aptitude versions ~n^subversion$ Package subversion: i 1.8.10-5100 p 1.8.10-6unstable500 Package subversion:i386: p 1.8.10-6unstable500 = $ aptitude versions '?name(^subversion$)' -F '%C %A %t %i %p %v %V' Package subversion: installed hold 100 1.8.10-5 purged hold unstable 500 1.8.10-6 Package subversion:i386: purged none unstable 500 1.8.10-6 = I am more fan of the curses interface, though, so I normally use it differently. What I would do is to fire aptitude with no options, press / to start searching, enter ^subversion$ (or same but with l to limit/filter the view to only those matches), press n until I find the package that I want among all matches (mine shows subversion and subversion:i386 for the extra arch, as above). Then press enter to view the detail of the default version (showing description etc., and dependencies installed and missing), and if needed go to the bottom to browse the other available versions with the same package name (pressing enter here shows the details particular to that version, like different dependencies). This is a heavy-handed way of just viewing the available versions and what would be installed by default, but I would typically be doing other things at the same time (like selecting a bunch of packages to upgrade, or choosing manually between the optional or suggested dependencies that I want to install along with the package). Hope that helps. -- Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montez...@gmail.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive:
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, 2015-03-31 at 19:34 -0700, Nikolaus Rath wrote: Note that this does not seem to be due to a lack of people willing to work on it though, cf. #750135. Yeah, I was following that bug in silence ;-) Cheers, Chris. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Mar 31 2015, Christoph Anton Mitterer cales...@scientia.net wrote: On Tue, 2015-03-31 at 23:18 +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: No, it is not. It used to be, but apt's dependency resolver is far superior to aptitude's these days. Are there so many cases where you need it? I usually just select what I want and install it... IMHO aptitude is one of the hearts of Debian, since it makes package management a pleasure compared to anything else I'd know within or outside of Debian. Development seems to be stalled these days, [..] Note that this does not seem to be due to a lack of people willing to work on it though, cf. #750135. Best, -Nikolaus -- GPG encrypted emails preferred. Key id: 0xD113FCAC3C4E599F Fingerprint: ED31 791B 2C5C 1613 AF38 8B8A D113 FCAC 3C4E 599F »Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a Banana.« signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
Hi,
On 31 March 2015 at 17:00, Matt Zagrabelny mzagr...@d.umn.edu wrote:
I've grepped debian-devel, but cannot find an email that was sent to
the list some months ago about tweaks to /etc/apt/apt.conf (IIRC) to
make aptitude behave more sanely.
Thus, I believe there are a couple of knobs to turn to make aptitude
behave more expectedly.
Here is it:
$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00dontbeanidiot
Aptitude::ProblemResolver {
SolutionCost priority, removals, canceled-actions;
}
--
Cheers,
Andrew
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Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On 03/31/2015 at 11:29 AM, Andrew Shadura wrote:
Hi,
On 31 March 2015 at 17:00, Matt Zagrabelny mzagr...@d.umn.edu
wrote:
I've grepped debian-devel, but cannot find an email that was sent
to the list some months ago about tweaks to /etc/apt/apt.conf
(IIRC) to make aptitude behave more sanely.
Thus, I believe there are a couple of knobs to turn to make
aptitude behave more expectedly.
Here is it:
$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00dontbeanidiot
Aptitude::ProblemResolver {
SolutionCost priority, removals, canceled-actions;
}
I'm aware of that snippet, and I have it in place, as of that thread
(which I think was on debian-user, actually).
I've done only very limited testing with it, but what testing I've done
seems to indicate that the problem behavior is still present. I'm not
going to say that it has _no_ effect, but it doesn't seem to have been
sufficient to fix the problem.
Regardless, even if this _is_ fully effective, that is what I was
referring to with the snipped comment that if there is a way to
configure aptitude so it behaves sanely in this regard, then that
configuration should be the default.
The configuration from this snippet is not the default, and if there's
any reason for that, no one seems to have mentioned it that I know of.
--
The Wanderer
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw
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Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
2015-03-31 15:18 GMT+02:00 Henrique de Moraes Holschuh h...@debian.org: On Tue, Mar 31, 2015, at 05:14, Fabian Greffrath wrote: I am curious why the aptitude package still has Priority: standard, i.e. why it is installed next to apt in each and every Debian installation? Aptitude isn't recommended for dist-upgrading since Lenny, I think. Do we really need to have two CLI package management tools installed, is this reasonable? Well, aptitude IS the CLI package manager. As far as I know, it is also the most complete and advanced package manager Debian has. Make no mistake: aptitude is the Debian package manager you should be using if you can deal with text mode and the command line. My main problem with Aptitude is that it currently has a lot of bugs and does not follow some Apt policy and instead rolls its own, for example see bug #683099, which I consider really important to resolve. Currently, there seems to be some trouble in the Aptitude development team, and to be fair, I can't really blame a small team of volunteers for bugs (which are even tagged help now...). But with the new apt tool available in Jessie, I think it is sound to raise the question whether we need apt, aptitude and apt-* all in the standard set, and if there is a recommendation which tool should be used by default (or if there should be none at all). IMHO the apt tool is already close to optimal, although I am missing a few features at time (which will probably be added later). Cheers, Matthias -- Debian Developer | Freedesktop-Developer I welcome VSRE emails. See http://vsre.info/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/caknhny9h3c_xfbslwmt+fxg4wfnny-3m2cwo5dnyjefbcqh...@mail.gmail.com
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On 03/31/2015 at 09:18 AM, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: On Tue, Mar 31, 2015, at 05:14, Fabian Greffrath wrote: I am curious why the aptitude package still has Priority: standard, i.e. why it is installed next to apt in each and every Debian installation? Aptitude isn't recommended for dist-upgrading since Lenny, I think. Do we really need to have two CLI package management tools installed, is this reasonable? Well, aptitude IS the CLI package manager. As far as I know, it is also the most complete and advanced package manager Debian has. Make no mistake: aptitude is the Debian package manager you should be using if you can deal with text mode and the command line. apt-get is the simple tool everyone knows about, though. It also needs another simple tools like apt-cache to be really usable. We can't very well leave them out of the standard Debian system, based on popularity alone. And the dependency resolver in apt-get is often far easier to tailor for dist-upgrade than the one in aptitude. Not for dist-upgrade alone; it's far saner and easier to handle in _most_ cases, in my experience. Repeatedly over the years - I'd almost say consistently - I've seen aptitude report that a requested package change (install, remove, or some combination) would result in an invalid or conflicting dependency situation, and suggest a solution which involves _not making the change which was requested_. If the requested configuration is, in fact, contradictory, then this is of course reasonable. However, in most if not all such cases, requesting the same change of apt-get produces a workable dependency solution immediately. Sometimes (when I've bothered to stick with it long enough), telling aptitude no, try again a few dozen times (and rejecting solutions which would downgrade or remove dozens, if not hundreds, of packages along the way) will eventually get it to suggest a solution which will make that change without extraneous side effects - which may or may not be the same as the one provided by apt-get. But as long as aptitude continues to take this brain-dead approach to dependency resolution, necessitating digging through obviously-bad suggestions before finding something as reasonable as what apt-get provides easily, it is IMO not viable for actual use - except perhaps by people who already know completely what they are doing and how to override aptitude's suggestions. If there's a way to configure aptitude not to do that already, then that configuration should be the default. (Note that I have not seen this recently, for the simple reason that I've rarely bothered _trying_ aptitude for actual package-management changes in years; however, every single time I _have_ tried it, I've seen this behavior in some form. The only things I still use aptitude for are 'aptitude why' and 'aptitude why-not', since there does not appear to be any analog to those on the apt or apt-get side.) That said, apt-get / apt-cache are simplified package management tools. They're useful, and easier to tailor to the dist-upgrade process. However, for day-to-day use, apt-get/apt-cache have nowhere near all the capabilities of a fully featured package manager like aptitude. You can probably duplicate most of aptitude's functionality with apt-get+apt-cache+lots of scripting nowadays, but still... Does aptitude include an equivalently functional analog for apt-cache? I remember, years ago, I asked on some Debian list what the intended replacement for apt-cache was, since I'd been told that apt-get was deprecated in favor of aptitude and I'd seen that aptitude did not seem to have equivalents for the apt-cache commands. I was told that apt-cache was not going away, and that the deprecated claim was probably incorrect. As far as I recall, however, no one disputed the idea that aptitude did not have such equivalents. -- The Wanderer The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: It's tangential to the main topic of this thread, but you might want to give /usr/bin/apt a try: it abstracts over apt-get / apt-cache, offering a single CLI entry point to (some of) the functionalities of both. I've used the new apt tool, and I do find it quite an improvement over apt-get, but I still have several use cases for which I currently use aptitude and for which I do not see an obvious alternative with apt: - Every time I update, aptitude lets me browse newly added packages, which I find quite helpful to keep up with what's being added in sid or experimental. - aptitude has a powerful search language, which I have not seen any equivalent for in apt. For instance, I frequently use searches like ?not(?automatic) ?reverse-Depends(?installed), which shows me packages I probably want to mark as automatic. And in addition to search queries, aptitude supports limiting the current package list to packages match a search query, or showing packages on the command line that match a query. (grep-dctrl is probably the closest equivalent, but its query language isn't as powerful, not least of which because it doesn't provide composeable expressions like ?reverse-Depends(?installed).) - aptitude provides a curses-style UI, which makes it easy to browse packages. I can search for a package by various means, see its description, quickly browse its dependencies (seeing at a glance which ones I already have installed), and navigate from a package to its dependencies and their dependencies, then back up. From this UI, I can quickly operate on an entire set of packages; for instance, I can hit M on the section heading for libs to mark all libraries as automatic, or on the dependency list for a metapackage to mark all dependencies of that metapackage as automatic. I can also stage operations incrementally, such as marking some packages for installation, reviewing the result, and incrementally modifying it until it looks like what I want. - aptitude's UI shows lists of packages with a consistent set of information, rather than just a bare list of package names that's harder to scan. I find it much easier in aptitude to see what a daily upgrade will change. And if something is broken, (e.g. a package in unstable that depends on a package only in experimental), aptitude makes that fairly obvious, while apt just says that it didn't upgrade that package. - aptitude's UI makes it easy to see held packages at a glance. Those are some of the reasons I use aptitude. I'd love to see some of these use cases addressed in apt. I actually *don't* particularly care for the aptitude dependency resolver, particularly since it often seems to miss obvious solutions in favor of awful ones; for instance, if I'm attempting to install one package from experimental that depends on another package from experimental, the correct answer is install the other package from experimental, not cancel installation of the package I asked for, and definitely not uninstall half the system. It's easy enough to tell aptitude what I actually want, by hitting R and A to reject or accept parts of solutions, but apt more frequently seems to choose the right thing to do on the first try. (Not always, but more often.) - Josh Triplett -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150331180018.GA2483@jtriplet-mobl1
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 9:32 AM, The Wanderer wande...@fastmail.fm wrote: Repeatedly over the years - I'd almost say consistently - I've seen aptitude report that a requested package change (install, remove, or some combination) would result in an invalid or conflicting dependency situation, and suggest a solution which involves _not making the change which was requested_. If the requested configuration is, in fact, contradictory, then this is of course reasonable. However, in most if not all such cases, requesting the same change of apt-get produces a workable dependency solution immediately. Sometimes (when I've bothered to stick with it long enough), telling aptitude no, try again a few dozen times (and rejecting solutions which would downgrade or remove dozens, if not hundreds, of packages along the way) will eventually get it to suggest a solution which will make that change without extraneous side effects - which may or may not be the same as the one provided by apt-get. But as long as aptitude continues to take this brain-dead approach to dependency resolution, necessitating digging through obviously-bad suggestions before finding something as reasonable as what apt-get provides easily, it is IMO not viable for actual use - except perhaps by people who already know completely what they are doing and how to override aptitude's suggestions. I've grepped debian-devel, but cannot find an email that was sent to the list some months ago about tweaks to /etc/apt/apt.conf (IIRC) to make aptitude behave more sanely. Thus, I believe there are a couple of knobs to turn to make aptitude behave more expectedly. Cheers, -m -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/caolfk3vm0kzvee-bypj6yjaqfwp-ma5ybn1k7y1w-cbev1c...@mail.gmail.com
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, 31 Mar 2015 10:14:16 +0200, Fabian Greffrath fab...@greffrath.com wrote: I am curious why the aptitude package still has Priority: standard, i.e. why it is installed next to apt in each and every Debian installation? Aptitude isn't recommended for dist-upgrading since Lenny, I think. Do we really need to have two CLI package management tools installed, is this reasonable? Aptitude is not only a CLI package management tool. Grüße Marc -- -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! - Marc Haber |Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom | http://www.zugschlus.de/ Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG Rightful Heir | Fon: *49 621 72739834 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/e1ycvr6-000748...@swivel.zugschlus.de
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, Mar 31, 2015, at 05:14, Fabian Greffrath wrote: I am curious why the aptitude package still has Priority: standard, i.e. why it is installed next to apt in each and every Debian installation? Aptitude isn't recommended for dist-upgrading since Lenny, I think. Do we really need to have two CLI package management tools installed, is this reasonable? Well, aptitude IS the CLI package manager. As far as I know, it is also the most complete and advanced package manager Debian has. Make no mistake: aptitude is the Debian package manager you should be using if you can deal with text mode and the command line. apt-get is the simple tool everyone knows about, though. It also needs another simple tools like apt-cache to be really usable. We can't very well leave them out of the standard Debian system, based on popularity alone. And the dependency resolver in apt-get is often far easier to tailor for dist-upgrade than the one in aptitude. That said, apt-get / apt-cache are simplified package management tools. They're useful, and easier to tailor to the dist-upgrade process. However, for day-to-day use, apt-get/apt-cache have nowhere near all the capabilities of a fully featured package manager like aptitude. You can probably duplicate most of aptitude's functionality with apt-get+apt-cache+lots of scripting nowadays, but still... So, yes, IMO we need both aptitude and the simplified apt toolset in standard. -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique de Moraes Holschuh h...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1427807930.566306.247525541.1e9ea...@webmail.messagingengine.com
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 10:18:50AM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: apt-get is the simple tool everyone knows about, though. It also needs another simple tools like apt-cache to be really usable. It's tangential to the main topic of this thread, but you might want to give /usr/bin/apt a try: it abstracts over apt-get / apt-cache, offering a single CLI entry point to (some of) the functionalities of both. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150331132238.ga18...@upsilon.cc
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, Mar 31, 2015, at 10:22, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote: On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 10:18:50AM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: apt-get is the simple tool everyone knows about, though. It also needs another simple tools like apt-cache to be really usable. It's tangential to the main topic of this thread, but you might want to give /usr/bin/apt a try: it abstracts over apt-get / apt-cache, offering a single CLI entry point to (some of) the functionalities of both. Noted. I will play with them. Thanks for mentioning it! -- One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond where the shadows lie. -- The Silicon Valley Tarot Henrique de Moraes Holschuh h...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1427808892.569981.247546013.7a1b3...@webmail.messagingengine.com
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
Am 31.03.2015 um 15:18 schrieb Henrique de Moraes Holschuh: On Tue, Mar 31, 2015, at 05:14, Fabian Greffrath wrote: I am curious why the aptitude package still has Priority: standard, i.e. why it is installed next to apt in each and every Debian installation? Aptitude isn't recommended for dist-upgrading since Lenny, I think. Do we really need to have two CLI package management tools installed, is this reasonable? Well, aptitude IS the CLI package manager. As far as I know, it is also the most complete and advanced package manager Debian has. Make no mistake: aptitude is the Debian package manager you should be using if you can deal with text mode and the command line. My experiences with aptitude on dist-upgrades are not that great. Actually, they are pretty bad. On the other hand, on day to day usage, aptitude is fine as tool to browse your installed packages, getting rid of unused packages etc. -- Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the universe are pointed away from Earth? signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, 2015-03-31 at 23:18 +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: No, it is not. It used to be, but apt's dependency resolver is far superior to aptitude's these days. Are there so many cases where you need it? I usually just select what I want and install it... IMHO aptitude is one of the hearts of Debian, since it makes package management a pleasure compared to anything else I'd know within or outside of Debian. Development seems to be stalled these days, but it still seems to work quite fine and if aptitude should no longer be installed by default - then some other packages should come first. Cheers, Chris. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
On Tue, Mar 31, 2015 at 10:18:50AM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote: On Tue, Mar 31, 2015, at 05:14, Fabian Greffrath wrote: I am curious why the aptitude package still has Priority: standard, i.e. why it is installed next to apt in each and every Debian installation? Aptitude isn't recommended for dist-upgrading since Lenny, I think. Do we really need to have two CLI package management tools installed, is this reasonable? Well, aptitude IS the CLI package manager. As far as I know, it is also the most complete and advanced package manager Debian has. Make no mistake: aptitude is the Debian package manager you should be using if you can deal with text mode and the command line. No, it is not. It used to be, but apt's dependency resolver is far superior to aptitude's these days. I stopped using aptitude when I got tired of having to tell it to try some other solution *each*and*every*time* I tried doing an upgrade. When you tell aptitude to install package A, its dependency resolver will sometimes happily tell you that in order to do what you asked it to do, it must install package A's dependencies, but leave package A itself uninstalled. When you tell aptitude to upgrade package A, its dependency resolver will sometimes happily tell you that in order to do what you asked it to do, it must *remove* package A rather than upgrade it. Ther are plenty of such bugs in aptitude's dependency resolver. I recommend against using it, these days. And no, we shouldn't have it installed by default anymore. -- It is easy to love a country that is famous for chocolate and beer -- Barack Obama, speaking in Brussels, Belgium, 2014-03-26 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/20150331211856.ga3...@grep.be
Re: aptitude has Priority: standard, why?
+++ The Wanderer [2015-03-31 11:36 -0400]:
On 03/31/2015 at 11:29 AM, Andrew Shadura wrote:
On 31 March 2015 at 17:00, Matt Zagrabelny mzagr...@d.umn.edu
wrote:
Thus, I believe there are a couple of knobs to turn to make
aptitude behave more expectedly.
Here is it:
$ cat /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/00dontbeanidiot
Aptitude::ProblemResolver {
SolutionCost priority, removals, canceled-actions;
}
I'm aware of that snippet, and I have it in place, as of that thread
(which I think was on debian-user, actually).
I've done only very limited testing with it, but what testing I've done
seems to indicate that the problem behavior is still present. I'm not
going to say that it has _no_ effect, but it doesn't seem to have been
sufficient to fix the problem.
Regardless, even if this _is_ fully effective, that is what I was
referring to with the snipped comment that if there is a way to
configure aptitude so it behaves sanely in this regard, then that
configuration should be the default.
This may well be a good idea. If we are changing the defaults can we
_please_ have the suite displayed by default too (7-year old wishlist
bug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=484011). I've
been changing this setting for a decade now on every box and it's dull.
Personally I think aptitude is great - and I use the curses interface
as my standard upgrading tool and diagnostic tool. I love how easy it
is to wander round when there is an issue and work out exactly why
something is 'broken', or whatever. I've had very little trouble with
the resolver, and I like the way it continues to offer you choices,
unlike apt which just gives you one.
But I don't much care whether it is 'standard' or not - it's easy
enough to install.
(this thread has been educational) - I had forgotten that there was an
'apt'.
Wookey
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