I recently switched to Debian after years of Mandrake, and I've been running
Sarge for a couple of weeks now.

I just updated my sources (standard mirror, no funny stuff) and ran
synaptic. New versions of vim, mplayer and acroread available. Ok, click
on upgrade and apply. Uh-oh, it wants to remove kde! It seems the new vim
replaces kvim, which removes kdeaddons, which removes kde!

This has sort of shaken my confidence in apt. Why does removing kvim mean
removing the entire kdeaddons package? Ditto for kdeaddons and kde, why
does removing kdeaddons remove the entire kde?

How do you handle situations like this? Does this mean that you shouldn't
run 'apt-get upgrade' as a cron job?

Thanks,
--
Nick

Hello

Nick (<spambucketREMOVE_THIS@iinet.net.au>) wrote:

> I recently switched to Debian after years of Mandrake, and I've been
> running Sarge for a couple of weeks now.
>
> I just updated my sources (standard mirror, no funny stuff) and ran
> synaptic. New versions of vim, mplayer and acroread available. Ok,
> click on upgrade and apply. Uh-oh, it wants to remove kde! It seems
> the new vim replaces kvim, which removes kdeaddons, which removes kde!

No, it will only remove kvim and the meta packages kdeaddons and kde.
The meta package are empty, they only make it easier to install kde.
Nothing else of your KDE installation will be removed.

> How do you handle situations like this? Does this mean that you
> shouldn't run 'apt-get upgrade' as a cron job?

Excactly. If you use Debian Testing or Unstable, don't install upgrades
automatically. You can however download them automatically (apt-get -d
upgrade) and install them later. Also, try apt-get dist-upgrade. By the
way, on my system I don't have any conflict - I could install kdeaddons
and kvim withoug removing vim. Try to run apt-get update again.

best regards
Andreas Janssen

--
Andreas Janssen <andreas.janssen@bigfoot.com>
PGP-Key-ID: 0xDC801674 ICQ #17079270
Registered Linux User #267976
http://www.andreas-janssen.de/debian-tipps-sarge.html

Andreas Janssen wrote:

> Hello
>
> Nick (<spambucketREMOVE_THIS@iinet.net.au>) wrote:
>
>> I recently switched to Debian after years of Mandrake, and I've been
>> running Sarge for a couple of weeks now.
>>
>> I just updated my sources (standard mirror, no funny stuff) and ran
>> synaptic. New versions of vim, mplayer and acroread available. Ok,
>> click on upgrade and apply. Uh-oh, it wants to remove kde! It seems
>> the new vim replaces kvim, which removes kdeaddons, which removes kde!
>
> No, it will only remove kvim and the meta packages kdeaddons and kde.
> The meta package are empty, they only make it easier to install kde.
> Nothing else of your KDE installation will be removed.
>
>> How do you handle situations like this? Does this mean that you
>> shouldn't run 'apt-get upgrade' as a cron job?
>
> Excactly. If you use Debian Testing or Unstable, don't install upgrades
> automatically. You can however download them automatically (apt-get -d
> upgrade) and install them later. Also, try apt-get dist-upgrade. By the
> way, on my system I don't have any conflict - I could install kdeaddons
> and kvim withoug removing vim. Try to run apt-get update again.
>
> best regards
> Andreas Janssen
>

Many thanks for your advice, much appreciated. I understand now the concept
of meta packages. (The upgrade went seamlessly, btw.)

--
Nick

Andreas Janssen a écrit :
> Hello
>
> Nick (<spambucketREMOVE_THIS@iinet.net.au>) wrote:
>
>
>>I recently switched to Debian after years of Mandrake, and I've been
>>running Sarge for a couple of weeks now.
>>
>>I just updated my sources (standard mirror, no funny stuff) and ran
>>synaptic. New versions of vim, mplayer and acroread available. Ok,
>>click on upgrade and apply. Uh-oh, it wants to remove kde! It seems
>>the new vim replaces kvim, which removes kdeaddons, which removes kde!
>
>
> No, it will only remove kvim and the meta packages kdeaddons and kde.
> The meta package are empty, they only make it easier to install kde.
> Nothing else of your KDE installation will be removed.
>

Use "apt-get -s upgrade" for a simulation of the actions to be done.
This should confirm that only the meta-packages are removed

Fnor