[AuckLUG] Settle an arguement for me! apt-get, apititude and dpkg

[Trent Murray]

Martin,

Many thanks for taking the time to provide such a considered response!  It
is very, very appreciated.
Your information should settle some disputes!

What about dselect?  is that relevant anymore?

Cheers,

Trent


On 24/06/07, Martin Bähr <mbaehr at email.archlab.tuwien.ac.at> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jun 24, 2007 at 10:18:52AM +1000, Trent Murray wrote:
> > Q. a) What is the difference between the following tools and when or
> where
> > they should be used in preference of the others.
> >
> > 1. apt-get
> > 2. aptitude
> > 3. dpkg
> > Also can they be used interchangeably ?
>
> preference should be in the following order:
> aptitude -> apt-get -> dpkg
>
> use apt-get for anything that aptitude doesn't handle, and use dpgk for
> the rest that you can't do with the other two.
>
> since etch (and in ubuntu a while longer) aptitude is the recommended
> tool and not optional any more.
>
> also, do not use aptitude install/remove and apt-get install/remove
> interchangeably. aptitude records which packages have been installed as
> a dependency for other packages, and will remove them if you remove the
> other package. this is very useful if you eg do:
> aptitude install kde
> which will install 315 packages on my machine.
> if i later decide to remove it, aptitude will remove all those 315
> packages.
> apt-get will not.
>
> aptitude will may get confused when you use apt-get.
>
> aptitude has a lot of other features that make it preferable.
>
> (aptitude search, which complements apt-cache search is nice as it shows
> installed state as well)
>
> note that aptitude by default installs recommended packages as well,
> apt-get does not do that, so you may want to change the default or use
> the -R argument.
> (aptitude install -R kde results in 2xp17 packages)
>
> i have not found anything that apt-get does that aptitude could not do,
> and i almost never use dpkg except for dpkg -L if i can't figure out how
> to use a package, or to resolve wierd package conflicts.
>
> greetings, martin.
> --
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> Martin Bähr       http://www.iaeste.or.at/~mbaehr/
>



-- 
Regards,



Trent Murray
IT Consultant
Guardian Technology Group

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