On Fri, Aug 17, 2001 at 01:01:10AM +0200, tim wrote: > hello > > well I am sorry if this has discussed to death, I didnt find a > comparison. > > I always thought dselect/apt-get are frontend for dpkg. > dselect uses ncurses, apt-get is only command line. dselect offers a > manual dependency resolving while apt-get (mainly) just downloads the > file and calls dpkg... > > my question is due dependencies, are they resolved the same way, either > if you use apt-get or dselect? or are there any differences. I have > recently made the experience that dselect worked on a specifig update > (cdroast) while apt-get gave my dependency problems... > > Is the difference that dselect calls database, once you use it, while > apt-get first calls dpkg and than dpkg calls the database about > dependencies?
dselect will generally want to install "Recommends" while apt-get won't. I don't know the internals about when things are called. Both seem to use their own mechanism for initial dependency resolution and then dpkg will later insure that the dependencies are met when it does its dirty work... Also, if you track woody or sid, you probably want to use "dist-upgrade" rather than "upgrade" for apt-get. The first will install dependencies that aren't already installed and remove conflicting packages, whereas the second will only update installed packages (usually not sufficient for tracking an unstable branch). I usually use the "-du" options to an "apt-get dist-upgrade" so I get a clear report of what it intends to do and that the installation doesn't happen 'til I've got all the packages. deity and aptitude are nice frontends as well -- a little buggy yet... -- Eric G. Miller <egm2@jps.net>
