Daniel Burrows <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> Or by not displaying anything as "will be installed/upgraded" before >> aptitude is sure that it will do that, or would if the user hits >> [enter]. Of course if a proposed solution to a dependency problem >> involves upgrading and installing new packages, that should both be >> indicated as part of the solution. But just displaying the result of >> "upgrade and install as much as possible" first, and later telling the >> user that this doesn't work, this is a suboptimal way to interact with >> the poor user... > > It sounds like you're saying I shouldn't display the state of the > program before resolving dependencies? Wouldn't that be horribly > confusing if some of the automatically installed packages had dependency > errors? "huh? Why do I care that libherring43 had dependency problems? > I didn't ask you to install that!"
Yes, that would be confusing, too. The "standard resolver" output you posted in an other mail would be clearer. And in my case, it would have been good to indicate that, as a side effect of holding back A, B and C, also the 70 other packages which were displayed as "NEW packages are going to be installed" will be "kept at their current version: (none)". Something like Resolving dependencies... The following actions will resolve these dependencies: Keep the following packages at their current version: apt [0.6.46.4-0.1 (now)] apt-utils [0.6.46.4-0.1 (now)] libsasl2-2 [2.1.22.dfsg1-10 (now)] python-apt [0.6.21 (now)] + + Do not install NEW depended-on or recommended packages: + libbla, libfasel, libblubber, pciutils, pci-inutils, ... Score is -30 Regards, Frank -- Frank Küster Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
