How to force aptitude to install recommended packages?

crisostomo_enrico · 12-18-2007, 01:46 PM

Hi.

I'm fighting with this: I just ran

Quote:

# aptitude upgrade
# aptitude full-upgrade

and it informed me that some required package, such as gcc-multilib, is recommended but will not be installed.

How can I force it to install recommended packages? I read the documentation and by default it should, but does not.

Any hint?
Thanks,
Enrico.

poonippi · 12-18-2007, 02:13 PM

I realise this is not the point, but are you able to install gcc-multilib manually. As it may be an issue with your sources.list. http://packages.debian.org is a good place to check version package availability.

crisostomo_enrico · 12-18-2007, 02:34 PM

Thanks poonippi. That's what I do: copying the names of the packages which were not installed and install them separately. But, obviously, that's not the desired solution. Then, if I had a problem with my sources.list, I shouldn't be able to install it later, should I?

BTW, this is my sources.list:

Code:

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main contrib
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ testing main
deb ftp://ftp.es.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free
deb-src ftp://ftp.es.debian.org/debian/ testing main contrib non-free

Bye,
Enrico.

farslayer · 12-18-2007, 03:36 PM

I thought you had to specify to treat recommends as dependencies using -r or --with-recommends unless you had altered your ~/.aptitude/config file. or so the man page would have me believe..

Quote:

-r --with-recommends
Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and ~/.aptitude/config).

This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Recommends-Important

Quote:

Option: Aptitude::Recommends-Important
Default: true
Description: If this option is true and Aptitude::Auto-Install is true, installing a new
package will also install any packages that it recommends. Furthermore, if this option is true,
then packages will be kept on the system if an installed package recommends them.

Option: Aptitude::Auto-Install
Default: true
Description: If this option is true, aptitude will automatically attempt to fulfill the
dependencies of a package when you select it for installation.

I would say try editing the ~/.aptitude/config file and adding both those Options set to true and try again.. personally I'm glad it doesn't install recommends automatically.. after all it's a recommended package not a required package.

crisostomo_enrico · 12-18-2007, 04:21 PM

Yes, probably the default behavior is good. The problem was that I already try the aptitude -r flag and the results were the same. I'll try the configuration option, even if in this case the man page is not as accurate, at least so it seems to me.

Thanks,
Enrico.

rickh · 12-18-2007, 05:12 PM

I believe Aptitude's default behavior is to install "recommends" when you do an "aptitude install xxxxxxxx", but not when you do "aptitude dist-upgrade".

Telemachos · 12-19-2007, 06:52 AM

Ditto to what Rickh says above. In fact, I always add

Code:

Aptitude::Recommends-Important "false";

to my /etc/apt/apt.conf file because I don't want recommended packages installed by default.

crisostomo_enrico · 12-19-2007, 07:13 AM

Thanks for your opinions.

One question: if aptitude doesn't do that during a full-upgrade, it means that one fresh installation for the distribution would not include such package, would it?