Re: [tlug] Number Your Feathers (Re: Printer Not Responding)

[Evan Monroig <evan.monroig@example.com>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com> writes:

>>>>>> "Evan" == Evan Monroig <evan.monroig@example.com> writes:
>
>     Evan> Actually I thought (and that has been my experience) that it
>     Evan> is quite easy to revert changes with apt-get if anything
>     Evan> goes wrong. Maybe that would not be the case if the change
>     Evan> pulls packages up to libc?
>
> For most apps, even system services like the printer daemon, the
> dependencies (in both directions) are contained in a quite small
> circle of closely related packages, and downgrade/upgrade fiddling via
> apt-get will be easy and safe.
>
> For system software, you shouldn't take the chance, unless you're
> prepared to reinstall from scratch.  There are 6000 packages in
> Debian, I'm sure Ubuntu provides the same order of magnitude.  While
> the vast majority of dependencies are predictable (foo-dev depends on
> foo), there are a fair number of weirdos.  If the dependency graph
> cycles and has side constraints on versions, you can get badly wedged.
>
> Apt's ability to resolve such cycles and conflicts is very good, but
> any update (except for the distro-recommended upgrades) that touches
> the basic system software such as libc, GNOME, or the package manager
> itself, should be avoided unless you know why you need to take such a
> risk.

Thanks for the detailed explanation !

Evan