Hi, I thought that I understood aptitude pretty well, although I'm no search pattern guru, but I just noticed something that I hadn't quite realized. I'm running Sid, and I decided to bravely / foolhardily upgrade my system, so I updated, and then hit 'U'. The resolver showed conflicts, so I did what I usually do, kept on hitting '.' to cycle through the proposed solutions until I hit one that showed all keeps and no removes. Before hitting 'g', I ran down the list of aptitude's planned actions and lo and behold, aptitude was planning to remove apt-listbugs, since libgettext-ruby1.8 was to be upgraded to a version which conflicts with apt-listbugs.
I had always assumed that such things would show up in the original resolver solutions, that it would warn me that the upgrade was incompatible with some package that I wanted installed. I guess I was wrong; apparently the resolver only flags inconsistencies between packages that you've *currently* given contradictory orders about, such as installing two incompatible packages, or installing one and removing one of its dependencies, but it will happily remove stuff you've already installed to comply with an upgrade request. I guess this is really the same thing that we've all seen when we ask aptitude to remove some package, and it willingly complies, even when that means removing its dependencies; that's not called a conflict. [Of course, in all the cases being discussed here, it does list its intended actions and gives you a chance to cancel.] Still, shouldn't there be a safe-upgrade option, perhaps even the default, when using the TUI? Celejar -- mailmin.sourceforge.net - remote access via secure (OpenPGP) email ssuds.sourceforge.net - A Simple Sudoku Solver and Generator -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
