aptitude full-upgrade - why does it not install Recommended packages?

[Chris]

sudo aptitude full-upgrade --with-recommends

can anyone tell me why it still reports (for example):

The following packages are RECOMMENDED but will NOT be installed:
libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libxalan2-java-gcj

Thanks,

Chris

[Sven Joachim]

Hello,

Post by Chris
sudo aptitude full-upgrade --with-recommends
libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libxalan2-java-gcj

The aptitude manual says:

-r, --with-recommends
Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages

Note the *new* here. Recommendations for existing packages are _not_
automatically installed, since aptitude presumes that you do not want
that; after all you did not install the recommended packages in
previous installs of your package.

Of course this can be a problem since the recommendations may change
over time. This is probably what happened here.

Regards,
Sven

[Chris]

Post by Sven Joachim
Hello,

Post by Chris
sudo aptitude full-upgrade --with-recommends
libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libxalan2-java-gcj

-r, --with-recommends
Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages
Note the *new* here. Recommendations for existing packages are _not_
automatically installed, since aptitude presumes that you do not want
that; after all you did not install the recommended packages in
previous installs of your package.
Of course this can be a problem since the recommendations may change
over time. This is probably what happened here.
Regards,
Sven

That at least explains the behavior, and makes sense I guess. But I'd
actually like it to really install all "recommends", for all packages I have
installed.

Thanks!

C

[Mumia W..]

Post by Chris
That at least explains the behavior, and makes sense I guess. But I'd
actually like it to really install all "recommends", for all packages I have
installed.

This Perl script won't do the installs for you, but it should give you a
look at what you might end up installing if you do want all of the
recommended packages for every installed package:

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @installed = grep /\binstall$/, `dpkg --get-selections`;
@installed = map +(/^(\S+)/)[0], @installed;
my $rx = join ('|', map quotemeta, @installed);

system(aptitude => search => "~Drecommends:($rx)");

__END__

[Florian Kulzer]

Post by Chris

Post by Sven Joachim
Hello,

Post by Chris
sudo aptitude full-upgrade --with-recommends
libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libxalan2-java-gcj

-r, --with-recommends
Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages
Note the *new* here. Recommendations for existing packages are _not_
automatically installed, since aptitude presumes that you do not want
that; after all you did not install the recommended packages in
previous installs of your package.
Of course this can be a problem since the recommendations may change
over time. This is probably what happened here.
Regards,
Sven

That at least explains the behavior, and makes sense I guess. But I'd
actually like it to really install all "recommends", for all packages I have
installed.

In principle you could run

aptitude install '!~i~Rrecommends:~i'

to do this. I am not sure, however, how well "OR" recommendations and
recommendations of virtual packages will be handled.

It is probably safer to start aptitude in interactive mode and use "l"
to limit the display to packages matching the same pattern:

!~i~Rrecommends:~i

Then you can press "+" for each of these packages and use undo
immediately for cases in which the installation would have unwanted side
effects.

[Chris]

Post by Florian Kulzer

Post by Chris

Post by Sven Joachim
Hello,

Post by Chris
sudo aptitude full-upgrade --with-recommends
libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libxalan2-java-gcj

-r, --with-recommends
Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages
Note the *new* here. Recommendations for existing packages are _not_
automatically installed, since aptitude presumes that you do not want
that; after all you did not install the recommended packages in
previous installs of your package.
Of course this can be a problem since the recommendations may change
over time. This is probably what happened here.
Regards,
Sven

That at least explains the behavior, and makes sense I guess. But I'd
actually like it to really install all "recommends", for all packages I
have installed.

In principle you could run
aptitude install '!~i~Rrecommends:~i'
to do this. I am not sure, however, how well "OR" recommendations and
recommendations of virtual packages will be handled.
It is probably safer to start aptitude in interactive mode and use "l"
!~i~Rrecommends:~i
Then you can press "+" for each of these packages and use undo
immediately for cases in which the installation would have unwanted side
effects.

Thanks! I guess I was a bit naive about what would happen
using --with-reccomends on everything. I will still use it when installing
new packages because in the past I have run across the problem of installing
something and painstakingly having to search for the correct packages to make
some functionality work. That doesn't seem to be such a problem anymore,
either becuase debian has gotten better or I have gottem more experienced.

Also thanks to Mumia for his script, which works nicely.

Chris

[Raquel]

On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:09:49 +0200

Post by Chris
sudo aptitude full-upgrade --with-recommends
libjaxp1.3-java-gcj libxalan2-java-gcj
Thanks,
Chris
--
C. Hurschler

If you use the "GUI", there is an option to change the way
dependencies/recommends are handled.

Also, if you use the command line, there's an option:
--with(out)-recommends - - - Specify whether or not to treat
recommends as strong dependencies
--
Raquel
============================================================
Folks never understand the folks they hate.
--James Russell Lowell