[Aptitude-devel] apt-get dist-upgrade vs aptitude full-upgrade, aka the apt-get jihad

Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo manuel.montezelo at gmail.com
Fri Jul 17 23:29:56 UTC 2015


2015-07-13 17:42 Axel Beckert:
>Hi,
>
>Tom Roche wrote:
>>
>> So my recommendation stands: some representative of the `aptitude`
>> developers, possibly accompanied by some of the `apt` developers
>> (some of whom seem to be on this list), should communicate the facts
>> above (which Beckert corroborates[5]) to the Debian Reference
>> maintainer(s) by the recommended mechanism.
>
>As mentioned before I see no big need to change the Debian Reference.
>
>> I'll cheerfully contribute "correction suggestion" if desired. I'd
>> `reportbug` on the DR myself, except that I'm just "some guy on the
>> internet," and IMHO this really should be done by more knowledgeable
>> people, such as `aptitude` and `apt` developers.
>
>I'd like to hear at least one other involved developer on that topic
>before doing anything in that direction (if at all).

I agree with what Axel previously said in this thread:

  And I don't see what's wrong with the Debian References: If you don't
  want to think about the difference between apt-get and aptitude on the
  command-line, it is (IMHO strongly) recommended to use apt-get or apt
  as that one in most cases produces better one-shot dependency
  resolutions. (And I'm saying this as a convinced and long-time
  aptitude user -- who btw. is happy that APT got a nicer CLI with
  "apt".)


And I also do not see the need to change the documentation.  apt is
better maintained and the primary and de-facto tool for package
management in Debian in the last few years.

Also aptitude in the last few years with the config by default comes
with strange suggestions like prefering to remove hundreds of packages
before upgrading one or a few packages.  I don't know how this affects
full dist-upgrades, since I haven't done any system upgrade for years
(running unstable and updating on demand with aptitude, often
cherry-picking updates), but it would surprise me that aptitude works
more reliably than apt for this job.


Cheers.
--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>



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