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For some reason, “Since we only use apt-get for installing stuff, why not? apt-get something” really pushes my buttons. Perhaps I'm reading too much of my own

by yrro 11y ago

For some reason, “Since we only use apt-get for installing stuff, why not? apt-get something” really pushes my buttons. Perhaps I'm reading too much of my own biases into my interpretation, but this sounds like it's written by a developer who has only ever used apt to blindly install a list of packages in a Dockerfile, rather than someone who has any system administration experience. And that's fine, except that maybe they should have taken two seconds to read the apt-get manual, and realise that apt doesn't just _install_ packages, but it also, shockingly, allows for them to be removed and upgraded too... Now I've gotten that off my chest, perhaps a more favourable interpretation would be that they are trying to say that they would prefer separate 'apt-get', 'apt-remove', 'apt-search' commands, in which case they'd have a point. Fortunately there is now a new 'apt' command that can perform the most common operations that users commonly invoke via the apt-get and apt-cache commands.

nunobrito 11y ago
Nuno Brito, original post author. Sorry to disappoint but professionally administrating Linux machines since 2004, started as end-user in 1998 and I work with whatever machines are available. My apologies if the blog post is read as an attack on apt-get, this is not the case. It is just an example. Not saying that we can/should change apt-get, there was apt already made for that purpose. This example is only to raise attention for upcoming command line tools and respective authors to think about the most frequent use-case scenarios and then make them as straightforward as humanly possible.
- yrro 11y ago
  No worries; as I say I am clearly reading too much into the original throwaway quote!
- cyphar 11y ago
  Debian isn't the only system on the block, and apt isn't the only package manager. OpenSUSE has zypper (which IMO has a much better interface and supports patches to packages). Arch has pacman (which has less features, but is great for normal use on your local machine, I wouldn't recommend it for administrating a server -- not just because it's rolling release). apt has a very janky interface overall, there are better alternatives IMO.

by yrro 11y ago

nunobrito 11y ago

Nuno Brito, original post author. Sorry to disappoint but professionally administrating Linux machines since 2004, started as end-user in 1998 and I work with whatever machines are available. My apologies if the blog post is read as an attack on apt-get, this is not the case. It is just an example. Not saying that we can/should change apt-get, there was apt already made for that purpose. This example is only to raise attention for upcoming command line tools and respective authors to think about the most frequent use-case scenarios and then make them as straightforward as humanly possible.

yrro 11y ago
No worries; as I say I am clearly reading too much into the original throwaway quote!
cyphar 11y ago
Debian isn't the only system on the block, and apt isn't the only package manager. OpenSUSE has zypper (which IMO has a much better interface and supports patches to packages). Arch has pacman (which has less features, but is great for normal use on your local machine, I wouldn't recommend it for administrating a server -- not just because it's rolling release). apt has a very janky interface overall, there are better alternatives IMO.