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Re: [LUG] Debian (Stable vs Unstable)

 

On Fri, 2008-11-07 at 01:53 +0000, Keith Abraham wrote:
> Benjamin M. A'Lee wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 06, 2008 at 03:08:54PM +0000, Keith Abraham wrote:
> >> From experience it is important with Debian unstable to only use
> >> apt-get dist-upgrade
> >> when upgrading or prreferably sidux's smxi script. (Aptitude and
> >> synaptic etc can lead
> >> to problems "down the line".)
> > 
> > I've been using aptitude to upgrade machines running unstable for years
> > without a hitch. aptitude is certainly recommended over apt-get, and has
> > been for some time now (since sarge was release, iirc).
> > 
> While Debian recommends the use of Aptitude and Adept when upgrading Debian
> stable and testing it deprecates it's use for upgrading sid. 

? Eh ? Where have you seen that info? aptitude is recommended for all
installations and all upgrade paths, just the same as apt-get. aptitude
is gradually replacing apt-get in various documentation sources (to
assist people new to Debian) but the day-to-day reality is that both are
used in all situations and a failure of either upgrade method is deemed
a release-critical bug.

Adept and synaptic have no particular status - if either produce errors,
it is merely a bug in the relevant package and the workaround is to go
to the command line with aptitude or apt-get.

> Aptitude 
> can be used to
> upgrade sid but you have to keep your eyes open for the occasional silly 
> things it
> will try to do eg.

aptitude and apt-get will both struggle with unstable from time to time
- particularly in the weeks after a release when hundreds of updates
that were held back during the release freeze are all uploaded in a very
short space of time. That is why Sid is unstable.

> This sort of thing rarely happens with apt-get.

I disagree. I've had plenty of situations in unstable where apt-get
dist-upgrade would have removed huge chunks of GNOME or the entire
bluetooth stack or an entire cross-compiler toolchain.

> I've been using sid consistently since 2003 and can affirm the above.
> apt-get has caused me the least problems (especially when upgrading X).

The two programs have different algorithms for dependency resolution and
that is all that is happening. 

Lenny includes another set of convergence patches between aptitude and
apt, trying to iron out some of the differences.

-- 


Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/


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