PACKAGES aptitude

[Michael Tautschnig]

> >>>>> On Fri, 8 Jul 2011 10:11:22 -0500, "John G. Heim" <jheim at math.wisc.edu> said:
> 
>     > Does it make any difference what order the packages are listed in a package 
>     > config file? I like to sort my lists of packages to make it easier to avoid 
>     > mistakes. But I'm not sure I should be doing that.
> I'm not sure if aptitude's dependency resolver cares about the order
> of package names. I would not try to sort them alphabetical. Inside
> the packages_config files I sort them by topics. I group my base
> packages and some additional network packages and my Debian tools, and
> so on. 
> 

I'd just like to add a non-negligible bit of information here: if you package
list grows too large, install_packages will split it into chunks. This is the
point where the dependency resolver could kick in in different ways, depending
on which groups of packages are formed. For instance package X might depend on
either A or B. If you have B in your list anyway, but ending up in a different
group than X, the dependency resolver might have chosen A over B, and you end up
with either A being installed and removed afterwards if conflicting with B, or
both A and B on your system.

Hope this helps,
Michael

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