[Aptitude-devel] Your opinion about a documentation patch, please

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Hi,

2012/3/20 Daniel Hartwig <mandyke at gmail.com>:
> [...]
> In general, the online help file is meant to be a terse overview of using
> the software.  It does not need to explain all of the many intricacies of
> using aptitude, that is what the manual is for.
>
>
> Personally, I am not satisifed with this patch in it's current form.

Would you prefer to reject the patch entirely and not modify this?


>> +  Please note that starting of aptitude in default mode does not set "planned
>> +action" to "upgrade" on all upgradable packages.  You must explicitly press
>> +"U".
>
> I don't see the need for this.  It is verbose and there is no reason a
> user should expect upgrades to be selected automatically upon startup.
>
> No other programs do this unless explicitly instructed.

Maybe not in the apt-world, but I'm wondering if he was thinking of
other OS/programs with automatic upgrades.

To be honest, it struck to me as strange that a Debian Developer was
confused about this, where for me these things were already well
known, so I guess that he's not the only one having problem
understanding things.

I wanted to consult the rest of you because I'm not sure about what's
better to do.


>> +   i - install (candidate version)
>> +   r - reinstall (current version)
>> +   u - upgrade (candidate version)
>
> This is incorrect: neither 'i' or 'u' always indicate an action on the
> candidate version.  It is obvious that reinstall acts on the current
> version.

I misread that and with 'i' and 'u' I though that he meant the action
of pressing the keys, which indeed acts only on current or candidate
(until you select more carefully the version desired).

Also, I think that in general he wanted to remark that, by default,
install and upgrade act on just one candidate version (among the
several ones possibly available); and that the candidate version is
not necessarily the newest one and that it's not only a binary
decision between current<>newer.

So on the whole, I think that maybe things can be made more clear, but
I don't know if it's worth bothering and maybe this patch as is
doesn't cut it.

In any case I'd like to get the bug report closed :)

Cheers.