Need for aptitude to perform apt upgrades?

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hi,

It seems that aptitude is needed by the apt module to handle apt upgrades. Is there any way to cut this dependency?

Thanks

2

I would be open to a patch for the module to use an alternative if it
is not present.

3

There is no strict alternative in apt. The closest would be `apt-get
upgrade` which does not install or remove dependencies. See
https://askubuntu.com/questions/117088/aptitude-safe-upgrade-equivalence-with-apt-get.

But there is also this bug which may be annoying
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=146207 (see also
http://www.boxever.com/controlling-os-upgrades-with-ansible).

I am not sure what the correct and expected behaviour would be. I think
it not obvious that an apt module requires aptitude (and I did not see
it in the documentation, but this may be my fault) but on the other
hand, I am not sure what the expected default behaviour of upgrade
should be.

4

aptitude is listed in the module requirements, I understand the
puzzlement for those that are used to using apt directly, but this was
added as aptitude added a convenient way to add some features and is
generally present in most .deb distros.