On Jo, 12 iul 12, 17:44:52, Gergely Nagy wrote: > > > Then some time later during upgrade it'll upgrade all packages > > but will not install N-M; at the same time it'll install > > new package that was added to Recommends in that new version. > > As far as I remember, it will not install new recommends. http://lists.debian.org/caaz6_fdtaydt1ubp08yf0d8l0jusffy1rzyhvmvztfcjeoc...@mail.gmail.com
> > It this correct description of apt behaviour, or have > > I misunderstood something? > > More or less, except that to the best of my knowledge, it will not > install new recommends on upgrade. And that makes sense, and is good so, > otherwise it will attempt to install all recommends I explicitly did not > install on each upgrade - no thanks. (Or we need to introduce yet > another complexity into the system, to mark packages as > not-to-install-ever. I doubt we have that now... but perhaps hold on an > uninstalled package works that way? I don't know.) Pin it to -1 ;) > But, the problem I'm talking about is not related to this. The problem I > see is when I have a gnome meta-package, that recommends, say, > totem. Now, lets suppose I'm also running unstable, for one reason or > the other, and a transition comes along, and something has a breaks on > stuff totem depends on, and the package manager decides to remove totem. > > Weeks later, when I want to watch a movie, at the end of the world, with > no network connectivify, I realize that something pulled my movie player > out of me. > > I would be very, very sad. > > Of course, silly me, why do I run unstable? And why don't I pay > attention to what my upgrades do? Well, I run unstable because I work > with it, and it has up-to-date stuff I have to work with. And running > unstable is far easier than running testing and cherry-picking (did I > mention I hate manual bookkeeping?). I do unattended upgrades, because I > trust the system to keep everything I installed, installed. I installed > the gnome meta-package because I want the full thing, bells, whistles > and crap included. Sorry, but IMNSHO running sid with unattended upgrades just asks for trouble. But then again IANADD, if Debian wants to optimize for this use case who am I to disagree? :) > I could, of course, mark totem manually installed, but then I'm back to > manual bookkeeping, could've installed the whole stuff by cherry-picking > each component, and that makes the meta-package useless for me, and > destroys the argument that recommends would result in less bookkeeping. > > Thus, here's an example where Recommends *will break* an existing > system. > > Oh, and since apt won't install new recommends on upgrade, to the best > of my knowledge, I won't get totem back once the > transition/breakage/whatever is fixed, either. While if it would be a > dependency, the upgrade would abort, because it'd try to remove a > package marked as manually installed. > > But similarly, if I ran stable, and one of the meta packages I installed > had a recommends on a piece of software, and I try to install something > that conflicts with it (either directly, or indirectly, via another meta > package, for example), then this piece of software gets removed. I may > or may not notice that - I might not even know wtf totem is, a novice > user who first sees Linux certainly won't - so it gets removed. Well, if the purpose of the Depends are to protect a novice from removing packages by mistake that surely a package manager offering to remove 100+ packages should definitely sound an alarm. But with apt-get you will get only two packages uninstalled (the package with the conflict and the metapackage depending on it). The big surprise will come only later, when apt-get suddenly suggest you should run 'autoremove' to get rid of some 100+ packages that look like not needed anymore. > It won't come back, unless I install it. > > As far as I'm concerned, this defeats the purpose of the meta-package, > because it breaks my expectation that whatever else it pulls in, will > stay there as long as the meta is installed. Did you consider creating your own meta-package? It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes to write an apt hook to get the control file and s/Recommends/Depends/ Kind regards, Andrei -- Offtopic discussions among Debian users and developers: http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/d-community-offtopic
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