routine debian upgrades, a few questions

[Kenny Hitt]

Hi.

First, be careful with your upgrades for the next few months running Sid.
Sarge was released last week, so major changes are happening to Sid.
For the next few months, Sid will live up to the name unstable.
Packages such as gcc, libc6, and dpkg itself will be upgraded.  The
developer of dpkg has already posted that there will be major changes
and the dpkg program should be considered unstable for at least the next
3 monts.
Remember, apt-get is just a front end for dpkg.

Packages will be held back because they depend on a version of another
package that hasn't been uploaded yet.  This can also happen if you are
just running upgrade and not dist-upgrade.  Upgrade only upgrades
installed packages, while dist-upgrade can remove and install packages
along with upgrading.  Dist-upgrade is sometimes required because of
changes to package dependencys.

As far as suggested and recommended packages, I usually note the names
and wait to install them if the apt-get install command I ran still
causes problems with my current task.
Usually, the recomended packages are the ones I need.  I've never found
clear documentation of the difference between the two either.  It
sometimes seems to be a subject for debate with Debian developers.

Suggests and recomends are fields in a .deb Debian package.
The maintainer of the package decided that these other packages would be
helpful in doing what ever task the main package is supposed to do.

Hope this helps.
          Kenny

On Thu, Jun 16, 2005 at 06:10:43PM -0400, Charles Hallenbeck wrote:
> I have a couple of questions someone may be able to answer for me. I am 
> using Debian sid (unstable) and do regular upgrades several times a 
> week, and some terms appear that I do not understand during that 
> process.
> 
> 1. Early in the "apt-get upgrade" process, it sometimes shows me 
> packages that are "kept back" and are therefore not upgraded. Why are 
> these kept back? I did not explicitly ask for them to be kept back.
> 
> 2. Maybe this only occurs when installing a new package rather than 
> during upgrades, but sometimes when doing an "apt-get install" for a 
> package, it first shows me "extra packages" that will be installed. That 
> one I understand. But then it may show me "Suggested packages" and 
> Recommended packages" which I might consider also installing. What are 
> these last two? suggested and recommended? For a while I followed up 
> each install with additional installs of both the suggested and 
> recommended packages, which of course led to other suggested and 
> recommended packages, and I am sure I could easily have done without 
> most of that stuff. Which are more important, the suggested list or the 
> recommended list?
> 
> These seem to be policy questions which I have not found discussed in 
> the docs I have read. Advice appreciated, including advice about what 
> FM's to R.
> 
> Chuck
> 
> 
> -- 
> The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (68% of Full)
> But you can still get downloads from http://www.mhcable.com/~chuckh
> 
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