On Sun, Feb 16, 2003 at 02:07:15PM -0600, Alex Malinovich wrote: > On Sun, 2003-02-16 at 08:37, Michael P. Soulier wrote: > > On 16/02/03 Alex Malinovich did speaketh: > > > > > Personally, I generally stick to apt-get and apt-cache for most of my > > > maintenance work. But I'll never give up dselect. Aptitude makes no > > > sense to me whatsoever. dselect just makes everything really simple. > > > Though, from what I understand, I'm more likely to get odd, unbelieving, > > > cross-eyed glances than "Me too's!" for that. :) > > > > I'm afraid of dselect. Every time I try to use it, it insists on > > installing a bunch of crap that I didn't ask for. > > Actually, this is primarily the reason that I like dselect. That list of > "crap" is all of the recommends and suggests that are present in the > package. A few years ago, I would have said this to be unnecessary, but > with the Debian repository having how many thousands of packages now, > there's really no way to know about all of the cool new things available > all the time. I think the rationale behind it is that if, for example, > you're installing cdrecord, you'd probably also want a front end for it. > apt-get will just install it and then go away. dselect (and I'd imagine > aptitude as well, to give it its fair credit :) will show you xcdroast > because it's suggested by cdrecord.
There's one problem: dselect is retarded WRT "Recommends". That is, when dselect pops up the "Conflict Resolution" screen with all the "Suggests" and "Recommends" pre-selected, you are free to peruse that list and de-select (I hate that word in conjunction with dselect) any packages which you decide you really don't need (for example some huge doc package). If that package was a Suggested one, no problem. However, if it was Recommended dselect pitches a fit and takes you back to the resolution screen with that package again pre-selected for you. Annoying. Fortunately, you can tell dselect "No really, I want you to not install package foo" by typing 'Q' to exit the resolution screen, but it's still a PITA. -- Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand. -- Chinese Proverb
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