Stephen Leake wrote: > Ludovic Brenta <[email protected]> writes: >> No; aptitude shows all packages, installed or not (in different sub-trees >> by default). > > It didn't for me when I tried to repeat the process you gave. > > Could you give more explicit instructions?
Uh, type "aptitude" by itself on a command line. Below the menu bar, you should see this: http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/ch01s01s01.html Below the "Not installed packages", you will see packages that are available but, guess what, not installed :) If that list is empty for you, try hitting 'u'; this will cause aptitude to 'update' its list of available packages. >>> The Synaptic search requires use of a rodent-like >>> attachment :), gives some false positives, and leaves out >>> libopentoken-dbg (I'm not clear why). >> >> That's why I think that ensuring that all Ada packages are linked with >> one another in some sensible way would be a big help. > > Only if Synaptic takes advantage of those links. It didn't use the > Depends: links properly, and it doesn't say anything about using > Recommends:. > > Unless there is some other tool that people should use. The other tool is aptitude. Since Debian 4.0 "Etch", aptitude is the official, recommended tool for both installation and upgrades; it supersedes dselect. If you navigate to gnat-4.3 and hit ENTER, you will see this: http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/ch01s01s01.html Towards the bottom of the screen, a line says: --- Packages which depend on gnat-4.3 And you can expand it (with ENTER) to: --\ Packages which depend on gnat-4.3 --- Depends --- Recommends --- Suggests --- Conflicts --- Replaces You can also hit '[' to expand it recursively to all levels. On each package in each of these categories, you can type '+' to install it, '-' to remove it, ENTER to display its detailed information, etc. This is how I installed all Ada packages; the only problem is that I sometimes had to do multiple cycles of ENTER, scroll down, '+' to get all packages. And I missed a few -dbg or -doc packages that are *not* currently linked to gnat-4.3 in any way. PS. I hear aptitide now has a GTK+ interface in addition to the ncurses interface. I've never used it. [...] > So having all ada-related packages Suggest gnat if they don't already > directly Depend or Recommend it or some package name containing the > string 'gnat' would cause synaptic to show them all in a single search. > That works for me. That's also a nice suggestion; the policy would need to forbid any version in the Suggests so as not to cause problems while we (package maintainers) upload upgrades to all Ada packages. > Just be sure the policy includes the rationale that "this causes > synaptic (and aptitude?) to display this package when searching for > 'gnat dependencies'". Yes. > And we still need a FAQ to point out this way of using synaptic; it's > not obvious, both because it doesn't involve searching for "ada", and it > involves the mysterious "dependencies" search option. How about an appendix in the Debian Policy for Ada? -- Ludovic Brenta. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/6101e1e8254b15a798ab8b09cd5c1...@localhost
