I'll save everyone some time and announce upfront that this is mainly a rant, which is why it's posted here and not in the questions sections. However, if you are inclined to read further and offer some pearls of wisdom, they would not go to waste.
My concerns are with packaging and package management, and I presently have three issues:
1. Last summer, I wanted to install jessie on an old Pentium4 to use for some 32-bit programming. I like the "codeblocks" IDE. So I checked the repository[1] and lo and behold, codeblocks is available for wheezy, stretch, and sid, but only as a backport for jessie. Apparently, the latest version of codeblocks (13.12) has been in testing for about 2 years (1-21-14).[2] A most generous interpretation puts it in testing since last September. After waiting for about a month for it to come out of testing, I decided to install stretch, where codeblocks was available, which I did.
So rant #1 is: is this how "testing" in Debian is supposed to work? I'm assuming it is different than say, Arch Linux, where something hits testing and is generally released for use within a day or maybe a week. Perpetual testing? Who is doing the "testing"?
2. Stretch is working fine for a few months, so I decided to install my favourite GUI text editor, "juffed." Whoa! No juffed in stretch.[3] There is a juffed in squeeze, wheezy, sid, and experimental, just not jessie or stretch!
So, rant #2 is: the same major version of juffed (0.8.1-1) is in squeeze, wheezy, and sid. Is there a valid packaging reason why this is not in stretch (testing)?
3. Yesterday I decided to take a break from the hum-drum of dwm and play with i3. As this install only has xorg and a few graphical applications (no desktop environment, java, etc.), I wasn't expecting any conflict issues. Wrong again. A quick
Code: Select all
aptitude install i3
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:
Remove the following packages:
...
106) xorg
107) xserver-xorg
108) xserver-xorg-core
109) xserver-xorg-input-all
110) xserver-xorg-input-evdev
111) xserver-xorg-input-mouse
112) xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
113) xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse
114) xserver-xorg-input-wacom
115) xserver-xorg-video-all
116) xserver-xorg-video-ati
117) xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
118) xserver-xorg-video-fbdev
119) xserver-xorg-video-geode
120) xserver-xorg-video-intel
121) xserver-xorg-video-mach64
122) xserver-xorg-video-mga
123) xserver-xorg-video-modesetting
124) xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
125) xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
126) xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
127) xserver-xorg-video-qxl
128) xserver-xorg-video-r128
129) xserver-xorg-video-radeon
130) xserver-xorg-video-savage
131) xserver-xorg-video-siliconmotion
132) xserver-xorg-video-sisusb
133) xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
134) xserver-xorg-video-trident
135) xserver-xorg-video-vesa
136) xserver-xorg-video-vmware
....
Yes, I was advised to remove xorg-server and all drivers, etc., in order to install an x-window manager!
Rant #3: this seems like one of those situations where one little semi-colon is out of place and once fixed, all falls into place again. However, I wasn't able to find an answer on these boards or the interwebz in general. (PS - no, I haven't been dancing to the "repo mix-and-match hit parade," my sources.list is how it was provided by the installation.) This is a stock install with a few applications on top. No funny-stuff. This is not the first time
I have received this laundry-list of conflicts; it occurrs regularly.
If you've actually read the foregoing, thanks for listening!
[1] https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=codeblocks
[2] https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/codeblocks
[3] https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=juffed