Potato->woody upgrade fails

Alex Satrapa grail at goldweb.com.au
Sat Nov 9 14:01:55 EST 2002


Matthew Hawkins wrote:
> dselect has an intuitive user interface with
> excellent dependency handling ...

Assuming you really *want* to install all the "suggested" stuff by 
default.  Then of course you'll install one package, and dselect will 
say "But you haven't selected to install these packages that that one 
depends on!" and you get caught up in the endless dependency tree of 
death.  By the time you get through it all, you've forgotten which 
package you were actually trying to install (objoke:alligators, swamp).

apt-get is smart enough to realise that if you really want to install 
the package, you're going to say "yes" to all the dependencies anyway, 
so it lists all the extra packages it's about to install for you. The 
only times I've had problems with apt-get is when packages were broken 
in the Debian distribution (classic example is upgrading from one 
version of a package to another, the new package didn't properly list 
dependency on a new version of a library, usually fixed within 6 hours, 
but 6 hours during which my workmates would laugh and say PEBCAK).

dselect has an interface only a mother could love.

Alex





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