[Aptitude-devel] Bug#724032: Bug#724032: Bug#724032: I thought I said install

[David Kalnischkies]

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 2:18 PM, Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org> wrote:
> IIRC apt-get marks packages upgraded with "apt-get install"
> automatically as manually installed despite it doesn't allow
> parameters to "apt-get upgrade" or "apt-get dist-upgrade" like
> aptitude does.

Just for the record:
apt-get does mark them manual on install, yes, simply because:
If you care enough to install/upgrade the package, you probably don't
want it to be considered for autoremove. I think¹ this is sensible for a
tool which has low user-interactivity; aptitude on the other hand talks
more directly to the user (at least in its g/cui) so the other way is fine
as well. I am pretty sure you will find for both choices enough arguments
to consider them a bad/good idea, so I doubt changing will gain us anything.
(and upgrade/dist-upgrade allow parameters since recently, but as
 additional hints, not in a "upgrade this package" sense)

(¹ not that what I think really matters, its the behavior for ages, so
 we aren't changing it, even if I would hate the default with all my heart.)


The real critic here is that APT/aptitude (and many other tools in that area)
"babble" too much and ask for confirmation maybe a bit too often,
so that users just skip-reading over the output (regular missing the really
 important information) and hit enter before they have thought about it.
I don't really see how we can change that though, as which information
is the important one varies a lot between runs and users.


Best regards

David Kalnischkies