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apt-get deps confusion...

I've been toying with Linux for a while, but I'm very much new to Debian and its apt system. I set up apt's sources list and ran

apt-get update

without a hitch, as per Debian's tutorial, here:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap.../index.en.html

Whenever I apt-get install xxx, though, I'm invariably prompted to confirm the install/upgrade of ~120 packages, many from the testing/unstable branches, and many seemingly irrelevant (such as games). Additionally, apt insists on removing ~70 completely unrelated packages(it needs to remove kscreensaver to install licq?). Surely, this isn't normal...

What, then, might I be doing wrong?

-Andrew

First off let me say that I use apt for rpm and know only a tad about Deb. But what I do know tells me that Deb uses older proven software in almost all apps. they do that b/c it is very stable as all the bugs have been worked out. Now if you are trying to use some newer software that relies on updated libs/apps/utils...I could see how you may need to upgrade all that software. Just a hunch.

Re: apt-get deps confusion...

Quote:

Originally posted by beaucoup
What, then, might I be doing wrong?

Depends what your trying to achieve? You say some of the packages are from the unstable branch so it's looks like your trying to upgrade to unstable.

If this is the case you'll to do:

apt-get dist-upgrade

If you didn't intend to upgrade to testing/unstable you've put the wrong sources into sources.list.

Re: Re: apt-get deps confusion...

Quote:

Originally posted by KevB

If you didn't intend to upgrade to testing/unstable you've put the wrong sources into sources.list.

I suppose I expected to be able to install individual packages from outside the stable branch without radically changing the rest of my mostly stable system. If I include nothing but the stable branch in my sources.list, of course, then I can't install any software that's not already on my local set of CD ROMS. So I guess my question is this:

How can I use apt to install stuff outside of the Deb stable distribution without upgrading my entire system?

-Andrew

Re: Re: Re: apt-get deps confusion...

Quote:

Originally posted by beaucoup
How can I use apt to install stuff outside of the Deb stable distribution without upgrading my entire system?

I'm not 100% sure but I don't think you can. Testing & unstable will use different libs and you'll probably end up in dependancy hell!

I think you'll have to fully upgrade to testing or unstable if you want the latest software.

If you want a newer version of a stable app already installed you could try:

apt-get install upgrade packagename

Not sure if that will work upgrading a stable package to unstable/testing though.

Your probably better off posting on one of the Debian mailing lists which are available from www.debian.org.

Hi,

I read this somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember where. Add the following lines to your apt.conf file in /etc/apt:

APT {
Default-Release "stable";
};

This will allow you to include the testing distribution in your sources.list and install from it. But if you install a package that depends on newer versions of other packages you might end up breaking alot of dependencies.

Good luck,

Chris

P.S. A quick google gave a cool site that explains how to maintain a sources.list with more than 2 sources. It's called apt pinning. I haven't used this myself, but I definitely plan on it.

Thanks for the link, Frisbee; it cleared up some confusion about how the priority system works in APT.
I guess I was just underestimating the magnitude of deps conflicts that arise from a mixed system. Removing the unstable branch from my sources made things mostly manageable. Still, though, I don't understand why APT wants to remove scores of unrelated packages from my system. Maybe I should just post the output of my apt-get session :)

Code:

gilliam:/etc/apt# apt-get install gkrellm

Reading Package Lists... Done

Building Dependency Tree... Done

The following extra packages will be installed:

  debconf debconf-utils debhelper defoma fontconfig gcc-3.3-base gkrellm-common libatk1.0-0 libc6 libc6-dev libdb1-compat

  libexpat1 libfontconfig1 libfreetype6 libgcc1 libglib2.0-0 libglib2.0-data libgtk2.0-0 libgtk2.0-common libncurses5

  libpango1.0-0 libpango1.0-common libpng12-0 libstdc++5 libxft2 locales nethack-common po-debconf xbase-clients xfree86-common

  xlibmesa3-glu xlibs xlibs-dev 

The following packages will be REMOVED:

  abiword abiword-common abiword-gtk abiword-plugins ark cdbakeoven kab karm kate kcalc kcharselect kchart kcoloredit kcron kde

  kdebase kdebase-audiolibs kdebase-libs kdelibs3 kdelibs3-bin kdepasswd kdepim-libs kdf kdict kdm kedit kfind kformula kfract

  kghostview khexedit kiconedit kit kivio kjots kmail knewsticker knode knotes koffice koffice-libs konqueror konsole kontour

  korganizer korn koshell kpackage kpaint kpm kpresenter kruler kscreensaver ksirc ksnapshot kspread ksysv ktimer kugar kuser

  kview kword libgtk-common libkdenetwork1 libkmid libkonq3 libnss-db libpango-common secpolicy 

The following NEW packages will be installed:

  fontconfig gcc-3.3-base gkrellm-common libdb1-compat libfontconfig1 libpng12-0 libstdc++5 libxft2 po-debconf xlibmesa3-glu 

24 packages upgraded, 10 newly installed, 69 to remove and 703  not upgraded.

Need to get 22.4MB of archives. After unpacking 113MB will be freed.

Do you want to continue? [Y/n]

-Andrew

It looks like you're upgrading to or installing packages that break dependencies. Apt tries as hard as it can (by default) to keep your system clean of broken dependencies, so it removes all of the packages necessary to do this.

Personally, I run the testing distribution without problems. All of the software is well updated. Every once in a while I'll install an unstable package by hand.

A couple exceptions do come to mind though. One of them is mozilla. The testing distribution keeps a terribly old mozilla package, while I like to run Firebird. So I install that myself. The Debian file structure makes this easy by providing /usr/local for non-standard installations. This works great for Mathematica as well.

Chris

Darn you, Frisbee, you've spoiled my dreams of never having to manually install software ever again :) I guess I'll use APT to take care of stable tree stuff, and keep on using tarballs for CoolNewStuff(tm).
I might have installed from testing ISOs if I knew that it was seemingly so stable(and if I knew that "stable" packages were often so very very old). Would it be painful to have APT up my system to "testing"?

I'm also a big fan of Firebird, but the binary is a 30 second install anyway. It does bug me that the new interface is missing a lot of configuration options, but that's a matter for another thread.

-Andrew

Upgrading to a different distribution is truly painless, unless you're poor sap on a modem connection...ahem... All you need to do is run

# apt-get dist-upgrade

I got apt to run pretty well using the apt pinning with all of the distributions in my sources.list. By the way, Firebird is in the unstable distribution.

Chris

(as for configuration options for firebird check out extensions. A couple of my favorites are SmoothWheel and Preferential.)

Ok, "apt-get update" does *not* install anything, it simply updates the list of packages that are available. If you run apt-get update, then apt-get install xxxx, then its going to want to install xxxx, *plus* the 120odd packages that have been upgraded.

Right. It's helpful to run a frontend (dselect, stormpkg) to see what packages were and will be updated.