On Sat, Jun 23, 2001 at 09:28:49AM -0700, Ross Boylan wrote:
> >Let me guess, you have considerable experience running Red Hat Linux?
>
> No.
Oh well, the cheap shot was at redhat, so never mind.
> >Is doesn't have to be like this with Debian. Use dselect, it fits
> >all your purposes. If dselect will not let you install some package,
> >it is either not advisable from a perspective of system consistentcy,
> >or you haven't set up the prerequisites incompletely.
^^
my typo
> Neither dselect nor apt would work without changes because unstable/sid is
> not in my sources list. The newer version was only in unstable. I didn't
Well, that counts as incomplete prerequisites (sources.list).
> want all of unstable. There only safe options I know of:
> 1) Edit sources list to include unstable/sid. apt-get update; apt-get
> install xxx; edit sources.list back the way it was. apt-get update. I'm
> not sure if this updates only xxx and dependencies, or if it updates
> everything that now seems out of date--which would be everything.
Like this, it can be a bit of a guess what will come out.
> 2) like 1, with dselect.
Dselect will tell you what you will be doing before you do it. Then it
will do the apt-get thing anyway.
> 3) Use apt-get's new pin feature (-t) after editing sources list. The
> problem is that if I want this on an ongoing basis I need to add unstable
> to sources list, leaving woody there (1+2 just replace it). Then I need to
> set some option in apt.conf to pin woody, and then override it on the
> command line for sid. Finally, because I have a longer sources list, every
> apt-get update over a modem would take longer. If I restore my
> sources.list, this ends up being like 1+2, only more work.
I'm not familiar with it. Surely if the feature is new then you will
have to install packages from unstable to begin with. Oh well.
> 4) apt-get source and build/install.
That feature of apt-get I just love.
> So I thought I'd try just installing the deb. As I said, I thought the
> version dependency checking happened at the dpkg level.
Yes, but dpkg looks only one step ahead. Apt-get can look more steps
ahead and walk dpkg around. Dselect gives you an overview before you
set off.
Cheers,
Joost
