apt-get issues in debian etch and gentoo question

[Sean M McMahon]

Unless they've severely changed things in debian 4, apt-get install, or 
now the recommended way, aptitude install will install a package + 
dependencies.  Of course if you already have these dependencies, apt won't 
install them.  A command like aptitude install --with-recommends 
--with-suggests should install a package, its dependencies, recommended 
packages and suggested packages.  Honestly however, when I attempted to 
upgrade by using --with-recommends, apt told me which packages were 
recommended but didn't install them.  You don't necessarily need every 
recommended or suggested package.  Look at the package description to see 
if you want it.  If you want to have a package but built it from source, 
You should have a look at apt-build.  There was an interesting article in 
the debian news which contained this topic.

speakup-bounces at braille.uwo.ca wrote on 08/01/2007 03:52:46 PM:

> Hi, I am currently running debian etch and am reading the posts on 
> gentoo dropping speakup.  Gentoo really sounds like a good version as 
> it is almost compiled entirely from source.  Is there any way like in 
> debian to install gentoo and use a speakup modified 2.6.21.6 kernel 
> with a dectalk express as that is what I have?  The issue I am having 
> with debian etch is that when I run apt-get install build-essential to 
> install the programs like gcc and other building programs a lot of 
> package names come up as rec amended and suggested packages.  What I 
> want apt-get to do is install all of these packages with out telling me 
> about them.  Of course I want to install the documentation or if I do 
> apt-get libc6-dev it tells me libc6-dev depends on libc6 but it is not 
> going to be installed.  Really I don't think that is good package 
> management and should be looked into.  What can I put in a file in the 
> apt.conf.d directory to tell apt to still prompt me but select the 
> suggested and rec amended packages when I want to install a package and 
> install dependencies for me?
> 
> -- 
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