Advances in Debian's package manager

Posted Sep 4, 2015 20:27 UTC (Fri) by xz (guest, #86176)
In reply to: Advances in Debian's package manager by flussence
Parent article: Advances in Debian's package manager

Aptitude is the only tool that enables users to properly resolving package conflicts.

In case of conflict, apt-get usually produces a bunch of useless resolutions which either propose to delete every conceivable package, or do nothing. This is especially the case when the users try to downgrade/upgrade packages from different releases (mixing stable and testing/unstable, or mixing Ubuntu releases).

With aptitude, specific conflicts and their requirements can be inspected, and alternative versions of packages can be selected, creating a preview of possible conflict resolution before finally applying it.

Together with apt pinning, it is very easy with aptitude to create a "distro" based on stable releases, and hand pick select packages from testing/unstable. All packages will not be automatically updated to unstable versions, but the latest versions are always available one scroll down the interface.

Advances in Debian's package manager

Posted Sep 4, 2015 21:32 UTC (Fri) by dashesy (guest, #74652) [Link]

I remember I uninstalled I think it was libgcc, and the entire system was uninstalled as dependency, so I learned to read before typing yes in Linux. Now after many years it is just a fun memory :)

Advances in Debian's package manager

Posted Sep 7, 2015 17:26 UTC (Mon) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]

The only tool on Debian maybe. Meanwhile zypper has given useful suggestions for conflict resolution since its inception.