Is aptitude really needed?

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1

I am running multiple services on lean (minimal) containers on Debian and aptitude package needs to be installed on the target system if you want to run:

“apt: upgrade=full” command

Is there a command that does the same but uses apt-get instead?

Installing aptitude pulls in a bunch of dependencies and I would like to avoid that if possible.

Regards,

Goran Juric

2

I am running multiple services on lean (minimal) containers on Debian and
aptitude package needs to be installed on the target system if you want to
run:

    "apt: upgrade=full" command

Is there a command that does the same but uses apt-get instead?

​Right now, the ansible apt module doesn't give you that choice, no.​

Installing aptitude pulls in a bunch of dependencies and I would like to
avoid that if possible.

​This is actually a good question. Even as a longtime Debian/Ubuntu user, I
still find it confusing to choose between apt-get and aptitude​.
So far, the ansible module doesn't give an admin the choice here, which he
would have been accustomed (or not) to have when doing things manually.

Perhaps this should be revisited, and let the module e.g. use at-get by
default, and aptitude as an option?
Also, keep in mind that some functionalities (updating sources I believe)
are not done by cli directly, but by a python library.

Thoughts, fellow more-expert-Debian users?

  Serge

3

I came from running Debian a long time ago, and have been an apt-get user for a long time.

Aptitude support came in with a patch for upgrade modes, as is noted below. If these can be done without aptitude cleanly,
I am quite open to it, unless other longtime Ubuntu/Debian folks have suggestions as to why we should not.

  • Three of the upgrade modes (C(full), C(safe) and its alias C(yes)) require C(aptitude), otherwise

C(apt-get) suffices.
4

I usually use “dist” which does “dist-upgrade” which works for me without aptitude.

I think dist-upgrade makes more sense anyway.

I found this online describing the difference:

From the man-page:

“upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system
…
dist-upgrade, in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages”

5

I’m open to changes assuming that’s installed by default on Debian and Ubuntu and most variants…