On Thursday 22 June 2006 17:45, Rick Moen wrote: > Quoting Ken Bloom ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): > > No. That won't convert *anything* because all of the ubuntu-desktop > > dependancies will still be lying around. > > Hmm. I'm having a difficult time parsing that. You may well be > right if you mean that the constituent packages of the ubuntu-desktop > metapackage would not be removed, only the metapackage itself. I've > never tried such conversions: I'd much rather build up systems from > a minimal base than create a situation where I must do mass removals.
I'm sure you're familiar with all of these points, but I feel like typing them anyway. When you use *aptitude*, it can keep track of which packages were manually installed (i.e. you asked for it explicitly on the commandline) and which were automatically installed (i.e. it got pulled in as a dependancy, for example libraries and *-data or *-common packages) when an automatically installed package has nothing installed that depends on it anymore, then aptitude will automatically remove the unused package. apt-get doesn't have that feature. > Generally, when despite best intentions I need to remove some glob of > packages, I find I get best results (fewest surprises, leftover junk, > and unintended side-effects) by gathering target package names from a > "dpkg -l" inventory, feeding them into an "apt-get remove" command > line, and then cleaning up using deborphan and debfoster. debfoster is now deprecated in favor of aptitude. Personally, I think they should keep it around, either for people who haven't switched yet (using debfoster can now be part of a migration path from apt-get to aptitude), or for people who don't want to switch like you. Nevertheless, there it is in the package description for debfoster. I wouldn't trust deborphan to be as accurate as debfoster or aptitude in this regard, because a lot of the ways it guesses which orphans are important is based on package name heuristics. > Fortunately, I've avoided the need for that ever since I figured out > that GNOME and KDE are, among other disadvantages, dependency > hairballs and not worth the pain. > > > The best way is to let aptitude figure everything out at once: > > $ sudo aptitude install xubuntu-desktop ubuntu-desktop- > > > > (The minus at the end of a package name means to uninstall, even > > though an install statement was given) > > Neat trick. I never saw that one before. Probably because I don't > trust aptitude (see below). That's actually a feature originally from apt-get. > > And aptitude will take care of removing unused dependancies (i.e. > > unused software packages that were part of ubunutu, but aren't part > > of xubuntu) > > (I think you mean "were part of the ubuntu-desktop metapackage, but > aren't part of the xubuntu-desktop one".) That is what I meant. > I still don't trust aptitude to make package decisions for me. I've > seen it screw up _way_ too often. Actually, aptitude seems to make less decisions for me than apt-get does. I find aptitude to be *too* questioning when it runs into conflicting things, and would prefer if it automatically just chose the resolution that apt-get would have chosen, so if I didn't like it I could change it myself. *Sigh.* Also, aptitude keeps a log of what it installs/removes in /var/log/aptitude. dpkg keeps logs that can track changes made by dpkg, apt-get or aptitude, but those logs are more verbose and don't split things into transactions, so they're harder to use. > And what's this bull*** about > either installing all Suggests: packages, or none of them? Sorry, > that's just broken. Fortunately, apt-get isn't. Aptitude gives you options for the Recommends: field, but not for the suggests field. apt-get doesn't give you any, which basically means that it corresponds to one of these options. I don't see what your problem is with this. --Ken -- I usually have a GPG digital signature included as an attachment. See http://www.gnupg.org/ for info about these digital signatures.
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