[ale] there's "apt" to be trouble - was -> linus doesn't like Debian?

[brian at polibyte.com (Brian Pitts)]

James Sumners wrote:
> I don't understand your point. Are you complaining that apt-get won't
> hold your hand when it finds broken packages? What if that broken
> packages was libc6 (it happens, trust me)? Would you really want your
> dpkg frontend telling you "The following actions will resolve these
> dependences: \ Remove the following packages: \ libc6"? I certainly
> wouldn't.

I'm not complaining about any aspect of apt-get's behavior; it doesn't 
do anything "wrong". Aptitude simply does it "differently" in a way I 
find more useful.

> I don't know how "smart" aptitude is; I've never used it. I prefer
> using apt and dpkg so I know what is happening and can fix things
> myself when they go wrong. If doing `apt-get dist-upgrade` is going to
> break things, then it shouldn't be done. The only time such a scenario
> should occur is when doing a dist-upgrade from the stable branch to
> testing, unstable, or experimental. At least, when running Debian.

When there are broken packages on your system or you ask it to do 
something that will violate dependencies, aptitude explains what the 
problem is and suggests (but doesn't automatically use) solutions. I 
find that this better enables me to know what is happening and fix 
problems. Your approach may differ, and that's fine. You should still 
consider trying aptitude for the other features. If nothing else, next 
time this discussion comes up you'll be able to say "I tried it, it 
wasn't my style" rather than "I've never used it." A getting-started 
guide for aptitude on the command line (rather than the curses 
interface) is at 
http://people.debian.org/~dburrows/aptitude-doc/en/ch01s02.html

BTW, 'aptitude remove libc6' produces page after page of complaints and 
finally results in

Resolving dependencies...
open: 1; closed: 0; defer: 0; conflict/break: 1 
        .Unable to resolve dependencies!  Giving up...
Abort.

-Brian