zerum wrote:
> knightron;2493672 Wrote:
>> automated package tools based on rpm, such as zypper or yum will not
>> encounter this issue, and zypper will even give you the option to ignore
>> a dependency sometimes if it finds a dependency conflict; apt would just
>> come up with a ridiculous list of **** like djh-novell mentioned.
>> Why would you want to ignore a dependency? Because sometimes it’s just
>> desired under unusual situations.
> Yes, apt (or apt-get) can not handle such issues very well. It
> generates only one solution and if the user does not agree with it he
> has to intervene by himself. On the other hand aptitude can generate
> such multiple solutions and asks the user which one to apply. The first
> solution from aptitude is the one that apt generates. If the user does
> not agree it starts his own dependency resolution. Aptitude can also
> ignore dependencies.
Interesting. I’ve never used aptitude, so I didn’t think to use it to
try to solve my problem. But none of the Ubuntu experts who helped me
suggested using it either.
Hi, it is incorrect, but i actually use the term ‘apt’ to refer to both apt-get and aptitude. When i use Debian, i have always used aptitude.
You say that aptitude can ignore dependencies too. I have never seen this done, can you please provide some documentation on how or something? Because to my knowledge, what i said still stands true for aptitude.
@djh-novell
apt-get and aptitude are both Debian tools, and created by Debian for Debian. Ubuntu being ‘based’ on Debian, it is often assumed it has the same tools and features. Ubuntu does not come with aptitude though, only apt-get. You can install aptitude from the repos, but many avid Ubuntu users aren’t even aware of aptitudes existence. This may be why it never got mentioned to you.
I’m running stable, testing and sid with aptitude. Especially at Sid aptitude saved me from many headaches, i.e. ignoring some updates. Afaik is apt-get knowingly designed for just one solution and letting the user interact if he does not agree. But at Sid (and sometimes testing) it is also with aptitude sometimes the best solution to abort the upgrade. A courageous “N” for the question to continue and waiting some time is occasionally the best dependency resolver.
In earlier versions of Ubuntu aptitude was always included. I just noticed that it is in 12.04 not longer the case.
Thanks for providing the documentation. I looked it over, and booted up my Squeeze partition. It’s a fresh install, nothing had been done to it after it was installed. I installed gnome off the dvd, and then attempted to remove Nautilus without anything else. This can be done with zypper and I did it with Opensuse 11.4; Gnome won’t work like the developers intended it to (with nautilus managing the desktop), but it works the way i want it to. With aptitude, following the instructions in your link, i managed to get the dependencies which were to be removed down to only one package.
I’m sorry to say but i think you’re wrong, and i still stand by my original statement. No matter what i did, i could not remove ‘Nautilus’ using aptitude without removing ‘Gnome-session’ too. This can be done with zypper and very easily.
Sorry, I was talking about aptitude’s behaviour while doing updates using the option “full-upgrade”. From my experience if there appear dependency conflicts the first solution from aptitude (=solution from apt/apt-get) is mostly to install new packages and remove conflicting packages. But you have the choice of more solutions (made by aptitude’s own resolver) and one of them is often to hold some conflicting packages. This must be done with apt manually.
But don’t get me wrong. I’ve used Debian and aptitude for many years and found it be a very good and versatile package manager. But I think that there is no visible improvement in apt or aptitude and that zypper is now ahead of apt. Imho zypper has more and better features compared to apt. And the SAT-solver seems to do a very good job.
Hm, I thought this can be done by zypper with the option --no-force-resolution or --no-clean-deps. But it does not work. Yast however provides an option to ignore some dependencies. What have I overlooked?
zypper rm --no-clean-deps --no-force-resolution nautilus
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...
Warning: --force-resolution conflicts with --no-force-resolution, will use the less aggressive --no-force-resolution
The following NEW package is going to be installed:
compiz-kde4
The following packages are going to be REMOVED:
cheese compiz-gnome gnome-control-center gnome-control-center-branding-openSUSE gnome-session gnome-session-default-session gnome-session-fallback-session
gnome-shell gnome-shell-browser-plugin gnome-shell-extension-alternative-status-menu gnome-shell-extensions-common gnome-shell-search-provider-documents
gnome-tweak-tool nautilus nautilus-extension-tracker-tags nautilus-sendto nautilus-sendto-plugin-empathy nautilus-sendto-plugin-evolution
nautilus-sendto-plugin-upnp patterns-openSUSE-gnome patterns-openSUSE-gnome_basis patterns-openSUSE-gnome_imaging patterns-openSUSE-gnome_imaging_opt
patterns-openSUSE-gnome_office patterns-openSUSE-gnome_office_opt patterns-openSUSE-gnome_utilities
1 new package to install, 26 to remove.
Overall download size: 60.5 KiB. After the operation, 21.2 MiB will be freed.
Continue? [y/n/p/?] (y): n
Since reading you post, i have installed Opensuse 11.4 with Gnome into a virtual machine. Admittedly, i thought ‘–no-force-resolution’ would have done it too, but i was wrong, and got the same error message as you. I said i’d done it in 11.4 but i must have done it with yast or rpm. Although it isn’t as simple as using rpm or yast, It is possible though by doing the following.
zypper al gnome-session
zypper rm nautilus
zypper rl gnome-session
I can not accomplish the equivalent result with a .deb based distro.
That article was written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols. As we all know his articles are not necessarily neutral or trustworthy, and may only serve to fulfil a questionable agenda:
I always get the impression that the rpm format is “fatter”,but it really doesn’t matter on this day and age,when you have package managers that automatically solve the dependency resolution and powerful computers,two or three seconds more when installing an rpm package are not going to put me off;why does it matter is invisible for the non technical user anyway!
Downloading all the packages first (which I do not think suse used to do) helps make packages seem to install a lot faster. Now that it does that, and no performance penalties on ext4 like deb, rpm is quite fast.
On 2012-11-04 23:06, Marius Timu wrote:
>
> I always get the impression that the rpm format is “fatter”,but it
> really doesn’t matter on this day and age,when you have package managers
> that automatically solve the dependency resolution and powerful
> computers,
Automatic is not the same as magic. The dependency information, that
previously resided in the rpm packages, now is all in the repository
metadata files instead, which you have to download in full (several
megabytes) before those tools can automatically solve the dependency issues.
It comes at a price, you know.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
I don’t really care,Yast works wonderfully on openSUSE;of course if you must get all dirty and technical everyone will make comparisons between deb and rpm!
Personally I have been always biased towards debian based linuxes and with good reasons.
Firstly one of the first distributions I tried was Suse 9.1 and it was a nightmare experience, lots of dependency hell too.
I have tried Mandriva when it was mandrake too, it barely worked.
But then came Mepis Linux my first successful linux experience and from that point on I stuck with debian based systems thanks to the sheer amount of packages and repositories.
I tried various RPM based distros but always found them lacking, either the package management was bad or the support was null.
This is the first time in three years that I sat down and installed a RPM based distro and this is the first time it actually feels like it might work.
Part of the reason why I like debian is apt, its vastly superior to other backends (though zypper is giving it a run for its money in 12.2) and I never had too many issues with it.
On 2012-11-13 06:56, MadmanRB wrote:
> Part of the reason why I like debian is apt, its vastly superior to
> other backends (though zypper is giving it a run for its money in 12.2
Zypper has been there for years, it has not changed much. What has
changed is your experience.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))
Eh not really, the last time I tried zypper was about a year ago or so and as a backend it always seemed slower and cumbersome compared to apt (plus YAST was much slower at the time too)
Now Zypper is a speeding bullet.
