[Aptitude-devel] Bug#822140: say if install x = install x+

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + wontfix
Control: close -1

2016-04-21 14:03 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson:
>Package: aptitude
>Version: 0.7.8-1
>Severity: wishlist
>File: /usr/share/man/man8/aptitude-curses.8.gz
>
>We read:
>
>       install
>           Install one or more packages. The packages should be listed after
>           the "install" command; if a package name contains a tilde character
>           ("~") or a question mark ("?"), it will be treated as a search
>           pattern and every package matching the pattern will be installed
>           (see the section "Search Patterns" in the aptitude reference
>           manual).
>
>           [SPOT A]
>
>           To select a particular version of the package, append "=<version>"
>           to the package name: for instance, "aptitude install apt=0.3.1".
>           Similarly, to select a package from a particular archive, append
>           "/<archive>" to the package name: for instance, "aptitude install
>           apt/experimental". You cannot specify both an archive and a version
>           for a package.
>
>           Not every package listed on the command line has to be installed;
>           you can tell aptitude to do something different with a package by
>           appending an "override specifier" to the name of the package. For
>           example, aptitude remove wesnoth+ will install wesnoth, not remove
>           it. The following override specifiers are available:

The paragraph above is the key ^

"aptitude install pkgA" is equivalent to "aptitude remove pkgA+", as
with the example with wesnoth.

By default, if there's no specifier, the default for "install pkgA" is
"+" (install), the default for "remove pkgA" is "pkgA-", etc.

I think that we cannot be more clear than that.

So the following only applies if you want to install pkgA while doing
other actions on the rest of the "unqualified" package names ("aptitude
purge pkg_to_install+ pkg_remove1 pkg_remove2"):

>           <package>+
>               Install <package>.
>
>               If the package was not installed, it is marked as manually
>               installed, and the dependencies newly installed are marked with
>               the automatic flag. If the package or the dependencies were
>               already installed, the automatic flag is preserved. See the
>               section about automatic installations in the documentation for
>               more information.


And then...

>OK but what if one doesn't use the "+", e.g., when just using
># aptitude install norfblatz
>is all of this:
>
>               If the package was not installed, it is marked as manually
>               installed, and the dependencies newly installed are marked with
>               the automatic flag. If the package or the dependencies were
>               already installed, the automatic flag is preserved.
>
>then true too? You really should mention it at SPOT A above. Or say that
>the "+" is the default action and optional.
>
>I'm saying that you say what happens when "+" is added, but don't say if
>that does or doesn't happen when it is not added.

You're reading the documentation phrase by phrase rather than on the
whole, as with many other bug reports.  that way it doesn't work.


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