Manual for apt

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 3 Sep 2016 10:51:46 +0100, Colin Law wrote:
>That seems unusual to me, I thought the whole point of man was to give
>a full definition.  Most man pages care not a fig about "overwhelming
>readers with a cornucopia of options and details".  If the details are
>not in the man page then where are we supposed to find them? I am not
>asking you that, Ralf, as I think that is the point you are making.

Colin, Full ACK :). We have "--help" and the man pages. I expect the
help to be short, but the man pages to be detailed.

I send a mail to devel discuss,
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2016-September/016835.html .

On Sat, 3 Sep 2016 09:55:09 +0000, Tony Arnold wrote:
>Is there some advantage to apt over apt-get or my preference aptitude?
>Just curious about your interest in apt.

Tom, most supported Ubuntu releases already provide apt. As soon as all
Ubuntu releases that do not provide apt (I guess it's "precise" only)
reach EOL, apt will become the official Ubuntu command line tool for
package management. However, apt and apt-get make not much of a
difference, apt does use a less ambiguous name instead of dist-upgrade,
which is named full-upgrade and a newbie don't need to use apt-cache or
dpkg to search, show or list. It also provides an option to edit
sources.list, so a newbie does not need to know where it's located.
Since apt is new, it doesn't need to be backwards compatible. Since
it's the new (or will become the new) official Ubuntu command line tool
for package management, pitfalls introduced by other user-friendly
tools, at the moment just aptitude comes to mind, could be ruled out,
since Ubuntu and apt defaults will fit very well together.

The apt defaults provide eye candy 

apt                         apt-get
========================    ========================
APT::Color="1"              APT::Color="0"
Dpkg::Progress-Fancy="1"    Dpkg::Progress-Fancy="0"

the eye candy could make fonts sometimes hard to read, but it's
possible to change it.

Yesterday I noticed that apt by default doesn't store installed package
in cache.

If you search the web you'll find a lot of comparisons, but they
slightly differ, likely regarding the development of apt and related to
the date when somebody wrote such a comparison.

As soon as I have time again, I want to edit a few Ubuntu help pages,
since I became a member of the “Ubuntu Wiki Editors” team, so I should
become familiar with apt, even while using apt-get still might be
preferred at the moment. If I have time again, apt might be the
preferred tool for the Wiki.

Regards,
Ralf