7.1.3 aptitude
aptitude is a package manager for Debian GNU/Linux systems that
provides a frontend to the apt package management infrastructure.
aptitude is a text-based interface using the curses library, it
can be used to perform management tasks in a fast and easy way.
aptitude provides the functionality of dselect and
apt-get, as well as many additional features not found in either
program:
-
aptitude offers access to all versions of a package.
-
aptitude logs all its actions in /var/log/aptitude.
-
aptitude makes it easy to keep track of obsolete software by
listing it under "Obsolete and Locally Created Packages".
-
aptitude includes a fairly powerful system for searching
particular packages and limiting the package display. Users familiar with
mutt will pick up quickly, as mutt was the
inspiration for the expression syntax.
-
aptitude tracks which packages have been installed due to
dependencies and removes them automatically when the packages that needed them
are removed from the system.
-
aptitude can automatically install Recommended:
packages[
5].
-
aptitude in full screen mode has su functionality
embedded and can be run by a normal user. It will call su (and
ask for the root password, if any) when you really need administrative
privileges
You can use aptitude through a visual interface (simply run
aptitude) or directly from the command line. The command line
syntax used is very similar to the one used in apt-get. For
example, to install the foo package, you can run aptitude
install foo.
Note that aptitude is the recommended program by Debian to install
a package and/or to upgrade your system.
For more informations, read the manual page aptitude(8) and
install the aptitude-doc-en package.
