Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 09:17:38PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote: I wouldn't place any of Boost in that category. In fact, I wouldn't place aptitude in that category, either. aptitude was historically the recommended tool to use for upgrades because it had the best dependency resolver for handling the dist-upgrade case. For so long as that's true, it should be priority: important, which means that by definition the things that it requires are also priority: important or higher. If apt-get is now strong enough that we can recommend it for upgrades without qualms, then aptitude is another alternative package manager and standard may be fine. Is that now the case? Not only is apt-get now strong enough to handle the cases for which we recommended aptitude in the sarge timeframe (with much better resolution of upgrades, installation of Recommends by default, and tracking of auto-installed packages), but aptitude has also had several deplorable regressions since etch. I don't know which of these made it into the lenny release or which are still present in squeeze, but: - When I type 'aptitude install foo', *removing* foo instead of upgrading is not a valid solution and should never be offered. - When I type 'aptitude install foo', installing 5 packages, removing 3 others, and upgrading 7 more *without installing foo* is not a valid solution and should never be offered. And the reason I don't know if these regressions are still present in lenny or squeeze is that, after about the second time running into such issues, I abandoned use of aptitude altogether. It's one thing to be unable to find a solution and throw me an error; I have no patience for tools that do something other than what I tell them to. On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 12:43:05AM +0900, Osamu Aoki wrote: Though I think any manual published on debian.org recommending aptitude for upgrades is a bug that should be fixed. I fail to understand your intent of this statement. Are you suggesting me to change the following text? Aptitude is the current preferred package management tool for the Debian system. Yes, I believe this text should be changed. How does it need to be changed? I am very curious and open for suggestion. I believe the correct recommendations would be: - apt-get for all commandline operations, including package installation and removal, and dist-upgrades - aptitude for an interactive text interface for managing the installed packages - update-manager for keeping your system up-to-date if you're running the default GNOME desktop. Please note this document[1] is claimed to be a secondary documentation. I am merely following the primary documentation: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgradingpackages | Release Notes for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (lenny) | | 4.5. Upgrading packages | | The recommended way to upgrade from previous Debian GNU/Linux releases | is to use the package management tool aptitude. This program makes safer | decisions about package installations than running apt-get directly. As I recall, there were long active discussion to reach this text. So at least, this assessment is not an opinion of a single developer. Two things: - This is a recommendation to use it as a tool for upgrading from previous releases, and is not an endorsement of the tool as a preferred package manager for other operations. The upgrade instructions in the release notes are carefully crafted to try to smoothly and correctly handle upgrades on as many users' systems as possible, and for that reason, solutions should be considered for each release that use tools other than those recommended for daily operations. - The recommendation in the release notes was correct /at the time it was drafted/ (i.e., for sarge). By lenny, it was giving noticeably worse results than apt-get in many cases, but by the time the issue was raised, some felt it was too late in the release cycle to revisit the text. Cheers, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 11:59:45AM +0200, Frans Pop wrote: Steve Langasek wrote: This manual represents the opinion of a single developer. And what does that have to do with the price of bananas in Iceland? The fact that aptitude is currently the recommended tool for package management has various reasons: user interface, features, dependency handling, etc. That status has evolved over the last 3 or so release cycles. You have even been part of some of the discussions (for example sarge - etch upgrade issues) Dependency handing is certainly not a reason to recommend aptitude. Yes, I was part of the discussions recommending it for release upgrades in the sarge and etch timeframe. For lenny, I strongly counseled *against* recommending aptitude for release upgrades, due to some concrete regressions in aptitude's upgrade handling at the same time that apt itself had reached parity on all the relevant features (improved upgrade resolver; Recommends handling). It remained in the release notes anyway owing to concerns that it was too late in the cycle to get good tester feedback on upgrades using apt-get, but I intend to again advise removing aptitude from the squeeze release notes in favor of apt-get. aptitude's resolver is just too inconsistent and has too many pathological edge cases for it to be a good idea to recommend its use as a dist-upgrader. Now for interactive upgrades, aptitude does have the best interface. But it doesn't follow that it should be Priority: important as a result; there are any number of packages that we may recommend for one purpose or another that nevertheless shouldn't be installed as 'important'. aptitude is the primary tool used by Debian Installer (and because of that its current priority of important is actally necessary). This is the only reason I see that it should be 'important'. I'm not (yet) convinced that this is necessary. Some alternatives would seem to be: - opportunistically install aptitude when a user wants fine-grained package selection in the installer; otherwise only install it when the 'standard' task is selected. (Downside: user has to wait for aptitude to be installed, introducing delay at another point in the installer.) - have the installer special-case the automatic installation of aptitude in spite of not being Priority: important, so that it's available at the right point in the installer. (Downside: special-casing; and if the user doesn't select the standard task, we either uninstall it at the end of the install leaving users without access to this interface post-install, or we leave it on everybody's system anyway, in which case it might as well just be Priority: important.) These are some other options to think about, but on balance, I would conclude that raising the priority of libboost-iostreams to important is actually the right solution. Boost is an annoyingly unstable library to depend on and its library transitions are painful, but most of the individual component libraries (including libboost-iostreams) are actually quite small with no unusual dependencies; and raising one of these components to important shouldn't cause any problems. It is also recommended in both the Release Notes (for stable release upgrades) and the Installation Guide. The first of these is a bug that needs fixed. The second is a reasonable recommendation if we're pointing users at the TUI; for the CLI we should simply recommend apt-get. So what's listed in the Debian Reference is a correct reflection of aptitude's current status and not, as you imply, the result of some single developer being on crack. Right, it's the result of several developers being on crack. :-P Regardless of whether there are other developers who agree with this particular opinion (which, for any given opinion, is bound to be the case), I think it's important to distinguish between documents whose drafting is done on open mailing lists and whose recommendations are the result of consensus (Debian Policy; DevRef, now that it's on debian-policy; Installation Guide; Release Notes) and those that are maintained by individuals. The latter are useful, but are not the word of the Project. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
On Sun, Jul 18, 2010 at 02:38:50AM +0200, Steve Langasek wrote: - When I type 'aptitude install foo', *removing* foo instead of upgrading is not a valid solution and should never be offered. It's still an outstanding (and irritating) bug as late as yesterday's sid... -- Jonathan Wiltshire 4096R: 0xD3524C51 / 0A55 B7C5 1223 3942 86EC 74C3 5394 479D D352 4C51 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:59:56AM -0400, Will wrote: aptitude is the preferred package management tool, so I'm thinking that the priority of libboost-iostreams should be upgraded [1][2]. [1] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch02.en.html#_basic_package_management_operations This manual represents the opinion of a single developer. It has not been ratified by the Debian project, and individual recommendations made within should not be taken for the preferences of the Debian project. Though I think any manual published on debian.org recommending aptitude for upgrades is a bug that should be fixed. [2] http://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude Well, and this is a page in a wiki about aptitude. The existence of such a page is not a recommendation by the Debian project that it should be used. -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. Ubuntu Developerhttp://www.debian.org/ slanga...@ubuntu.com vor...@debian.org signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
Steve Langasek wrote: This manual represents the opinion of a single developer. And what does that have to do with the price of bananas in Iceland? The fact that aptitude is currently the recommended tool for package management has various reasons: user interface, features, dependency handling, etc. That status has evolved over the last 3 or so release cycles. You have even been part of some of the discussions (for example sarge - etch upgrade issues) aptitude is the primary tool used by Debian Installer (and because of that its current priority of important is actally necessary). It is also recommended in both the Release Notes (for stable release upgrades) and the Installation Guide. So what's listed in the Debian Reference is a correct reflection of aptitude's current status and not, as you imply, the result of some single developer being on crack. The growing dependency chain of aptitude *is* of some concern and may be reason to re-evaluate its role, but in no way does that change its _current_ status. Cheers, FJP -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
Hi, On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 11:29:10PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: On Fri, Jul 16, 2010 at 12:59:56AM -0400, Will wrote: aptitude is the preferred package management tool, so I'm thinking that the priority of libboost-iostreams should be upgraded [1][2]. [1] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch02.en.html#_basic_package_management_operations This manual represents the opinion of a single developer. It has not been ratified by the Debian project, and individual recommendations made within should not be taken for the preferences of the Debian project. I can agree up to here. Though I think any manual published on debian.org recommending aptitude for upgrades is a bug that should be fixed. I fail to understand your intent of this statement. Are you suggesting me to change the following text? Aptitude is the current preferred package management tool for the Debian system. How does it need to be changed? I am very curious and open for suggestion. Please note this document[1] is claimed to be a secondary documentation. I am merely following the primary documentation: http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/release-notes/ch-upgrading.en.html#upgradingpackages | Release Notes for Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (lenny) | | 4.5. Upgrading packages | | The recommended way to upgrade from previous Debian GNU/Linux releases | is to use the package management tool aptitude. This program makes safer | decisions about package installations than running apt-get directly. As I recall, there were long active discussion to reach this text. So at least, this assessment is not an opinion of a single developer. Osamu -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
Folks, The package aptitude is priority important and depends on libboost-iostreams, which is optional. This is a violation of Policy section 2.5. The request of Bug #588608 is to raise the priority of libboost-iostreams to important. Reading Policy, I note that important means: `important' Important programs, including those which one would expect to find on any Unix-like system. If the expectation is that an experienced Unix person who found it missing would say What on earth is going on, where is `foo'?, it must be an `important' package.[1] Other packages without which the system will not run well or be usable must also have priority `important'. This does _not_ include Emacs, the X Window System, TeX or any other large applications. The `important' packages are just a bare minimum of commonly-expected and necessary tools. I wouldn't place any of Boost in that category. In fact, I wouldn't place aptitude in that category, either. So while raising Boost will solve the issue, it seems to me to be a recipe for runaway priority inflation. Is there any central authority to vet priority changes? Thanks, -Steve signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
Steve M. Robbins st...@sumost.ca writes: I wouldn't place any of Boost in that category. In fact, I wouldn't place aptitude in that category, either. aptitude was historically the recommended tool to use for upgrades because it had the best dependency resolver for handling the dist-upgrade case. For so long as that's true, it should be priority: important, which means that by definition the things that it requires are also priority: important or higher. If apt-get is now strong enough that we can recommend it for upgrades without qualms, then aptitude is another alternative package manager and standard may be fine. Is that now the case? -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
6, 2010 at 12:17 AM, Russ Allbery r...@debian.org wrote: Steve M. Robbins st...@sumost.ca writes: I wouldn't place any of Boost in that category. In fact, I wouldn't place aptitude in that category, either. aptitude was historically the recommended tool to use for upgrades because it had the best dependency resolver for handling the dist-upgrade case. For so long as that's true, it should be priority: important, which means that by definition the things that it requires are also priority: important or higher. If apt-get is now strong enough that we can recommend it for upgrades without qualms, then aptitude is another alternative package manager and standard may be fine. Is that now the case? -- Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87y6dc83h9@windlord.stanford.edu aptitude is the preferred package management tool, so I'm thinking that the priority of libboost-iostreams should be upgraded [1][2]. aptitude has more features than just a better dependency handler, like the significantly more advanced search syntax and the smarter, interactive resolver. I think the better decision is to edit it such that it doesn't require that library. However, that's a decision for the aptitude team to make, since I have no idea how heavily it relies on that package, or what portions of the program depend on that library. I'd be glad to donate some of my time if the aptitude team wanted it though. [1] http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/reference/ch02.en.html#_basic_package_management_operations [2] http://wiki.debian.org/Aptitude -- -Will Orr -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
Package: aptitude Version: 0.6.3-2 Severity: serious Serious as per policy 2.5 Cheers, Ron -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#588608: aptitude (priority important) depends on libboost-iostreams (priority optional)
On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 05:06:54PM +0930, Ron r...@debian.org was heard to say: Serious as per policy 2.5 Guess we'd better increase the priority of iostreams, then. Daniel -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-rc-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
