[Aptitude-devel] OT: how/where to ask aptitude questions?

[Tom Roche]

I realize this is a dev list, and apologies if this is a FAQ, but I've
looked for but haven't seen answers to this question: where to go (e.g.,
what forums, lists, IRCs, other sites) for answers to questions about
`aptitude`? Questions like

1 How to copy text from the interactive, character-mode-graphical
  `aptitude` (i.e., `sudo aptitude`)?

2 How to view and work with only the broken packages, or a subset of
  broken?

What I mean, why I ask:

>From using desktop ubuntu for a few years (and server ubuntu for longer,
and mint for a few months) I have some experience with APT. Mostly I
have used non-interactive command-line `aptitude` (i.e., `sudo aptitude
<update|full-upgrade|install|remove|purge> ...`) rather than, e.g.,

* the interactive, character-mode-graphical `aptitude`
  (i.e., `sudo aptitude`)

* full GUIs (e.g., synaptic, Ubuntu Software Center)

This worked well, because I kept up-to-date and because ubuntu shielded
me from massive breakage. However it does require (more or less)
periodic reinstalls, so yesterday I installed LMDE

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1604

which is based on debian testing (actually, a subset thereof). I'm
presently barely functional (e.g., I have emacs and firefox), thanks
largely to the "update pack" functionality in mintupdate-debian

http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1781

and the mint intermediate repos

me at it:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list deb
http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream import deb
http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free deb
http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free

and I was able to

me at it:~$ sudo apt-get install aptitude
> Suggested packages:
>   tasksel debtags
> Recommended packages:
>   apt-xapian-index
> The following packages will be upgraded:
>   aptitude
...
me at it:~$ sudo aptitude install apt-xapian-index tasksel debtags
> The following NEW packages will be installed:
>   apt-xapian-index debtags tasksel tasksel-data{a}

However I currently

- have 888 updates (per mu-d)
- have 69 broken packages (per `aptitude`)
- need to get some bigger apps/functions running (e.g., chromium,
  libreoffice, DVD playing)
- fear breaking big things (e.g., X, GNOME)

I suspect getting out of this hole quickly will require more knowledge
of APT etc than I currently have, so I'm trying to learn the interactive
`aptitude` via

http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/index.html

while cleaning up my breakage. This specific usecase leads me to wonder

1 How to copy text from the interactive `aptitude`? I like to keep a log
  when working on non-trivial problems, hence, e.g., I'd like to
  cut'n'paste the text from the lower pane of the interactive `aptitude`
  that indicates that, currently, my openoffice-common conflicts with
  libtextcat-data and libreoffice-common (rather than typing by eye).

2 How to view and work with only the broken packages, or a subset of
  broken? First I'm trying to cleanup my openoffice-related breakage.
  (I've been using libreoffice, so am planning to nuke packages=
  openoffice* anyway.) I updated, then typed

* 'b' to highlight the broken packages
* '/' to search for openoffice
* '-' to delete openoffice-base (the first found).
* '!' to apply

  Deleting openoffice-base didn't break anything, so I'd just like to
  delete that. However when I

* 'g' to preview pending actions

  I see that `aptitude` wants to delete 10 packages, install 109
  packages, remove 5 packages, and upgrade 5 packages. (I'll also admit
  not yet understanding the difference between 'delete' and 'remove'.)
  So I'm wondering,

* How do I make `aptitude` confine itself to just deleting
  openoffice-base, without selecting each of the other 128 packages and
  hitting '-' 128 times? Or must I bail to the non-interactive CLI?

* Is there a view just of broken packages? E.g., I'd like to see just
  the broken packages listed in the upper pane. Then, if I mark a
  package in that list for deletion, and that would break another
  package, that broken-to-be package would itself show in the list.

Feel free to reply directly to me or to forward,
and TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>