Aptitude Related

aptitude has a command line interface very similar to apt-get, if you like apt-get, then you will love aptitude. What aptitude has over apt-get is that it tracks which packages have been installed manually and which have been installed automatically (i. e. to fulfill dependencies). Automatically installed packages will be uninstalled as soon as they are no longer needed. I.e., when an automatically installed package is no longer needed when the last package depending on it is removed, aptitude will remove that too.

Or, directly

http://anarka.org/linux/debian_pkgmanager.php

dpkg(Good), apt(Better) and aptitude(Best)

aptitude is based on apt so most of the functions are the same as in apt, but it combines apt-get and apt-cache into the same program with some some new features.

Update package list:

Upgrade all installed packages:

Upgrade all installed packages but be more agressive on resolving dependecies, can remove and install new packages. It's also used to upgrade from a distribution to another(say from stable to testing):

Install packages:

Remove packages:

Purge:

See the changelog of a package, in this case we will check the changelog of gnome-games in experimental:

As in apt, aptitude can also handle several packages at the same time, for instance:

aptitude search is a bit different…

Search for packages that include the string gnome(for example) in their name:

Search for packages than include gnome in their description:

You can also search by version ~V, maintainer ~m, etc.

To list all installed packages:

Or to list all installed packages that contain gnome on their name:

Check for packages available on experimental(as long as you have a source for it):

List removed packages that weren't purged, their configurations still exist on your system:

If you want to delete ALL those configs do:

One of the new features,of aptitude, is logging every action, the logs are kept in /var/log/aptitude.

Thanks to logging package management is more efficient, it removes dependencies when you remove the package that installed them. That is great for metapackages (a metapackage is a list of packages needed for a certain task)

For example let's remove gnome-games, with apt we would get the following:

Nice gnome-games package is removed but nothing else, now let's try with aptitude:

This is much more efficient, not only it removes gnome-games, but it also removes packages that aren't needed anymore due to the removal of the package. Of course if you want good results you should only use aptitude, since apt doesn't log anything, so you can't just hope aptitude will know what you did with apt.

If you want to customize apt or aptitude use /etc/apt/apt.conf, i have the following lines in there:

Updated in 2006/07/23 anarka@anarka.org

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/04/06/aptitude_and_apt_get.html

I can't get my head around the (as of etch) newfangled aptitude dependency handling procedure. As an example, I'm trying to install texlive. As soon as I hit '+', I see this cryptic message in the bottom line:

[1(1)/…] Suggest 2 installs, 4 keeps w: examine !: apply …

(…and I just noticed I had to copy that by hand because aptitude —and only aptitude!— seems to disallow copying text from the xterm it's running in! What kind of sadism is that?)

Anyway, when I type '!', thinking that aptitude will now do what it suggests, namely install stuff, all the to-be-installed things are deselected and nothing happens.

So maybe 'e'xamining things will tell me stuff. When I do that, I see lists of packages that could be "kept" at their current versions (which doesn't make sense because they are flagged "UNINST". I also see lists of packages to be installed. Anyway, as soon as I hit '!' everything goes away again. I also can scroll through many alternatives using '.' and ',' but I don't really understand what this is all about.

The sarge aptitude used to be less unwieldy.

So how does this work?

I can tell you how I use it:

'e' gets you the list of suggested resolutions, as you've discovered. If one of them looks reasonable, '!' will choose that one. Sometimes that has the effect of just cancelling what you were going to do, sometimes it removes something, sometimes it installs something.

If none of the options looks right, hit 'q' (which, I believe, is not listed as an option). This will return you to the previous view, where you can fix things by hand. I've been doing this daily in sid while I wait for python-matplotlib and python-scipy to be updated for the latest python-numpy. The only way to get control back once aptitude has entered its problem resolution mode is to hit 'e' and then 'q', at least that I've found. I then go and hold the problem packages with ':'.

As an aside, another way you can install texlive is to use aptitude as a command-line tool:

That might present you with an easier-to-manage dependency resolution.

Michael A. Marsh

This is because aptitude asks xterm to send it mouse events, as do other programs (links and w3m come to mind). Since aptitude is getting the mouse events, xterm can't use them to copy & paste.

You can still select text while aptitude is running by holding down shift while you click.

That's interesting. Could you say which packages are broken and which ones aptitude says it wants to install / keep? This might be a bug. It would also be interesting to see what you get when you press "o" to get a breakdown of why the resolver did what it did.

The resolver information screen lists as "kept" packages packages whose upgrade or installation is going to be cancelled. It might be that aptitude decided to cancel installing texlive for some reason, which would cancel installing all the stuff it depends on (unfortunately, the removal of unused packages doesn't integrate with the resolver). My guess is that aptitude can't find any resolution that includes texlive; you could verify this by pressing "r" while the "keep texlive at its current version" option is selected, then seeing what the next new solution is.

My usual procedure using the resolver is to hit "e" to pop into the resolution screen and examine the decision aptitude made. You can select the individual actions in the list it presents to see why it made each decision (in the lower pane of the display).

I tag the decisions it made that I don't like by pressing "r", then ask it for the next solution; lather, rinse, repeat until I'm satisfied. If I'm not satisfied after looking at a few solutions, I might resolve things by hand, or just take the first solution (which usually errs on the side of being too conservative). You apply the solution by pressing "!".

In some cases "a" can also be useful; it tells aptitude to take an action whenever possible. This is partiularly useful (IMO) combined with tabbing into the list of alternative choices that shows up in the lower pane of the solution view.

Daniel Burrows @debian.org

Aptitude normally follows the Suggests & Recommended dependency levels, so it can end up installing packages that aren't actually required for another package to function but simply go well together.

This behavior can be permanently configured from the aptitude menu (F10) The change is saved at ~/.aptitude/config:

The corresponding configuration option is Aptitude::Recommends-Important which can be overridden by

You must refuse the solution, then aptitude will suggest something else, … or you purge podracer at the same time:

Andrei Popescu

if not work, then

or

Jeff Zhang

On Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 10:32:01AM -0400, Roberto C. Sanchez wrote:

Solution number 2 worked.

After this I removed all TeX-related program/packages, and could install TeTex without problems. Again I removed this, and tried TeXLive, but got the same problem again. There must be a bug in TeXLive - package. Or I have messed more things on my system :-)

So I went through the steps in #2-solution and have now a working TeTeX installation.

Thank you for your assistance.

/severino

aptitude was trying hard to figure out/fix the dependencies of broken packages. the message is illusive. What's is really count is the actual action that aptitude suggests at the end.

T