On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 04:36:26AM +0000, hellekin wrote:

[cut]

>
> But aptitude is far from a great GUI. I'm confused between apt,
> apt-get, aptitude, dpkg, apt-cache, etc. That's a lot of complicated
> programs with divergent interfaces that overlap a lot. I'd like a
> simple interface to the system packages that doesn't require looking at
> the manual or waiting 10 years to master.
>

But apt is not "a lot of complicated programs" at all. I am confident
that in more than 99.6% of the times a "normal" Debian/Devuan user
will need to invoke just two commands (apt-cache and apt-get), in one
of these five fashions:

- apt-cache search [PATTERN]
(this searches for PATTERN in package names and descriptions)

- apt-get install [PACKAGE-NAME]
(well...)

- apt-get remove [PACKAGE-NAME]
(...)

- apt-get update
(update the list of packages from the repo)

- apt-get upgrade
(upgrade your system installing the last available version of each
of them)


And both apt-cache and apt-get (as all the other tools in apt-utils)
have the same interface:

<command> <function> [options] <params>

That's it. No diverging interfaces. No overlaps. No need to wait 10
years to "master" them. Just two commands, with function names spelt
in current english (I believe there was even a project, back in the
days, to localise the names of apt functions...)

If you have bash_completion enabled, "apt-get install" and "apt-get
remove" are a nobrainer. If you stay with the same (stable) release
and don't mix-up repos from different releases, you will never ever
have a single reason to use dpkg. If you like to mess-up with
different repos, aptitude will not save you anyway, and you have to
revert to dpkg. It's true that apt-get has thousands of options, and
you might need apt-file if you are looking for the package that
provides a specific file, but those account for the <0.4% of the
remaining use cases. Actually, I have never ever had to use dpkg
directly to fix problems in official packages, despite having used
almost exclusively Debian testing. So in my case that 0.4% accounts
just for the occasional calls to apt-file, and to "apt-get
dist-upgrade", but the last ones become very rare if you remain in a
stable branch.

If there is something I have learnt using unix systems is that things
look complicated and hard only until you don't know them :)

HND

KatolaZ

--
[ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ --- GLUG Catania -- Freaknet Medialab ]
[ me [at] katolaz.homeunix.net -- http://katolaz.homeunix.net -- ]
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