[Aptitude-devel] Bug#341434: aptitude: please consider allowing different configurations for interactive and non-interactive mode

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + moreinfo


Hi,

2005-11-30 14:55 Marc Haber:
>Package: aptitude
>Version: 0.4.0-3experimental1
>Severity: wishlist
>
>Hi,
>
>I would like to have aptitude Automatically resolve dependencies of a
>package when it is invoked in non-interactive mode ("aptitude install
>build-essential"), but not automatically resolve dependencies in
>interactive mode ("aptitude", Search, "+").
>
>This could probably be implemented by extending the config file
>mechanism that already exists: Today, aptitude uses
>$HOME/.aptitude/config  if it exists and /root/.aptitude/config if
>that does not exist. This could be extended to have config.interactive
>or config.commandline pulled in when appropriate, probably as
>_extension_ to the normal config file to only override part of the
>config settings.

I have to admit that I never saw the need to have different options for
different ways to run aptitude, so maybe I'm missing something.

In general, I think that the number of options currently supported by
aptitude (over 100) and the complexity of its interrelationship is quite
high, and I suspect that most users expect that the options that they
set in curses mode apply also to the command line, except when named
otherwise (there are specific UI and CmdLine options).

I think that complicating this a bit more by adding a layer on top can
create more problems [1] than it solves [2].

[1] users confused about which changes apply to which mode, or
    forgetting that settings on one file don't apply to others

[2] this is 10 years with no seconds, and I don't recall to see any
    other bug report requesting this


So in principle I am not considering doing this unless there's a
compelling reason / example.


>Currently, I can help myself with a wrapper script adding an
>appropriate -o option, but it would be great to have that feature in
>aptitude proper.

If it's individual comman line options that are used quite often, I
suppose that shell command aliases can be a reasonable workaround as
well.


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