aptitude and apt-get, WAS: [lug] Brand and Retailer for blank DVDs and CDs? Knoppix Hard DriveInstallation?

[Timothy Klein]

On 17 Jan 2006, at 8:42 PM, John Karns wrote:

> I was also freely alternating between using the GUI based  
> "synaptic" and
> the text-mode apt-get package mgt utilities, which might be  
> problematic,
> dunno.  And there are one or two other pkg mgt utilities as well,  
> e.g.,
> "aptitude".  There apparently are quirks inherent in the package
> management system, that can trip up even experienced Debianites [1]

Fascinating.  I did not know this.  I wonder if that might explain  
some of the weird issues I have on my Debian unstable box, as I've  
always freely mixed aptitude and apt-get.  Hmm.

Tim

(John's footnote follows)

>
> [1] Here's a comment from a third party mailing list discussion a  
> couple
> of months back.
>
> "Aptitude and apt-get are supposed to coexist. I'll state now
> that actually they're not that well behaved.  Yes, they use
> the same central database, but aptitude, in its nice broken
> way, maintains some portions of it for its exclusive use
> (remember that aptitude has some """"additional""" features
> that allow it to track other packages more """successfully"""
> then apt-get).  This is fine, as long as once you have started
> to use aptitude, that you continue to do so, as using apt-get
> for some operations thereafter, can lead you to a slight
> mismatch in versioning and tracking of packages."
>
> "It gets even better. There's also a bug in aptitude between
> the command-line and ncurses interface. They work differently,
> and will give different results (the classic example here is
> when you try and put a package on hold).
> I would have liked to have seen these rather glaring bugs in
> aptitude fixed especially as Sarge is plugging it as the de
> facto in place of apt-get (bad idea, IMO). Indeed, had you
> checked the BTS for aptitude, you'd see the numerous bugs
> filed against it on this issue and others."