Breezy -> Dapper - adept wants to remove 295 packages

[Howard Coles Jr.]

On Thursday 04 May 2006 10:00, John L Fjellstad wrote:
> "Michel D'HOOGE" <michel.dhooge at gmail.com> writes:
> > IIRC all packages installed outside of aptitude are flagged as
> > "manually installed". aptitude isn't confused but it won't remove them
> > automagically if they are no longer needed. Another solution, within
> > aptitude, is to mark the really important packages as "manually
> > installed" ('m' and 'M' shortcuts). You can mark a bunch of packages
> > at once by applying the shortcut to the upper folder.
>
> There is more too it than that, isn't it?  Otherwise, we wouldn't see
> the massive uninstallations that happen when you mix apt-get and
> aptitude.
>
> >From what I can gather, something like this happens.
>
> You install program A that depends on library libA with aptitude.
> aptitude marks libA as automatically installed, and will remove it
> if A gets removed.
> You then install program B that depends on library libA with apt-get.
> At this point, doesn't know that program B is depended on libA (in the
> automatic sense, dpkg seems to know the dependency graph).
>
> You then try to remove (or upgrade) program A with aptitude.  aptitude
> sees that libA got installed with program A, and sends the request to
> remove A and libA while-you-are-at-it to dpkg.  dpkg notices that B was
> dependent on libA, so removes that too.
>
> So, if you set libA to 'manually installed', aptitude won't request to
> remove libA if A is removed.

All of these programs are nothing more than front ends for APT.  Aptitude, 
Synaptic, adept, or whatever are all front ends.  The same DB that keeps up 
with all this is called no matter whether you apt-get install, or aptitude 
install or synaptic install.  Now, aptitude may add a little extra as far as 
keeping up with some things, but essentially its apt that doing the work.  
I've used all four, throwing in adept.  Normally I run apt-get update to 
update the package list from a command line, and then I either start up adept 
updater, or synaptic to upgrade the packages.  I don't like aptitude because 
its interface is kludgy to me.  However, coming from a Debian background I 
have discovered that the key to being able to keep up with what was installed 
with what is to keep manual installs (Synaptic calls these locally installed) 
to a minimum, and remove any obsolete packages as soon as possible.  A Manual 
install is one where you ran dpkg -i <packagename>, if you install via 
apt-get install <appname> that is the same as doing it inside aptitude, 
synnaptic, or adept.
If you apt-get install kde you'll have the exact same results if you clicked 
on kde from the graphical utils, or if you select it for install in aptitude.  
apt will determine, via the kde package, what dependencies are involved and 
pull them down, and their dependencies as well. 

-- 

See Ya'
Howard Coles Jr.
John 3:16!

Christian Books On-Line http://risenbooks.com
http://home.comcast.net/~dhcolesj