On 20 Jun 2015 9:24 am, "Craig Sanders" <cas@taz.net.au> wrote:
>
> On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 08:37:46AM +1000, zlinw@mcmedia.com.au wrote:
> > >>IMPORTANT point here apt and dselect use different package lists both
> > >>these need to be updated separately to keep the system in sync.
> >
> > >please stop saying this because it's not true.
> >
> > >apt-get, aptitude, dselect, dpkg and even the GUI versions of same *ALL* use
> > >/var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/available.
> >
> > I beg to differ here, on my systems apt-get update does ___not___ touch
> > /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/available. Also after such an update
> > dselect does ___not___ show any change, but after doing "dselect update",
> > the /var/lib/dpkg/available but status remains as it was.
>
> the only way dselect and apt could use different package lists is if you
> have dselect configured to use, say, cd-rom or multi-cd or one of the
> other methods while apt's sources.list files point to different sources.
>
> (and even then, they're not really using different package lists
> - they're constantly replacing the package lists with what their
> configuration tells them is correct, i.e. they've been configured to
> conflict with each other)
>
> you can make sure this is NOT the case by running dselect, choosing
> option 0 [A]ccess, and selecting 'apt' as the update method.
>
> then, when you need to switch between a CD source and an http source
> (or whatever), change the /etc/apt/sources.list file.
>
> try this and then run:
>
>     dselect update ; apt-get -V -d -u dist-upgrade
>
> and then to actually perform the upgrade, either 'apt-get -u
> dist-upgrade' or 'apt-get -u upgrade'

Curious as to what's at play here I did a quick search while killing time on the train.

https://wiki.debian.org/DebianPackageManagement has this to say:

"Debian package management consists of several layers. The lowest layers, most of which you won't want to touch, are made up of dpkg and associated programs. On top of those layers are the Apt and apt-get tools as well as the newer aptitude tool. The Package Management Tools page has brief descriptions of these and other tools which work with DebianPackage files."

And then...

"Full-Screen Frontends
These are both console (ncurses) and GUI based. There are a number of alternatives, similar in some regards, different in others. For users of RPM-based Linux distros, analogs include RedCarpet and Up2Date.

aptitude may be invoked in full screen console mode (ncurses) or CLI mode, and is a friendly frontend to apt.

DSelect is an older frontend to apt. It is no longer recommended.

Synaptic is another GUI-based frontend.

Apper is one more GUI front-end (KDE-based). The front-end is based on packagekit."