APT 2.0 Released For Debian Package Management

[mppix]

other distros that have better package managers survive and even thrive on the use of third party (or unofficial) repos. OpenSUSE's Zypper for example has very sane and robust package/dependency conflict management, and also tracks what repo is used for each package, and will NOT update it from a different repo unless specifically asked for, regardless of repository priority or other things.
I'm guessing also Yum does it.

I've had apt try to delete half my system at least 3 times when I was using Linux Mint Debian with their normal repos, never on OpenSUSE with additional stuff from third party repos

Yeah this explains why Debian Testing can break just because some packages might be missing for a short while. Are you aware of what Debian Testing is?

I run Debian testing and stable on workstations and servers, respectively. I load a few (selected) external repos as well but I never had issues with apt that were not solved nearly instantaneously. It all depends on the repo. Once it is in the sources, a 'sudo update && sudo upgrade' will upgrade all installed packages with root permissions.

Debian testing does not just break (or delete your system) unless *you* break your installation. Also, there is no need to use or criticize Debian if other distros work better for you. The Debian way works well for many people and, sure, it can be improved ... it's software.

Personally, I think external repos or .deb packages downloaded from the web should never be fully trusted. Therefore, they should also not be installed with root permissions as this is a straight-forward attack vector and neither apt or debian can do anything about it. This is what snap/flatpack will hopefully solve some time. I mean, this is what Android does since its inception.

OpenSUSE's Zypper for example has very sane and robust package/dependency conflict management, and also tracks what repo is used for each package, and will NOT update it from a different repo unless specifically asked for, regardless of repository priority or other things.

I'm not sure if what you describe is a bug or a feature. I sometimes update packages manually. I *really* like that the repo(s) start updating the package once they catch up.

I guess people not man enough for Arch need some other place to call home

Somebody should give you a cookie for this one.

[starshipeleven]

It all depends on the repo.

Yeah that's exactly my point. I can write shell scripts that are more fault-tolerant than apt, for christssake.

For example I observed that aptitude didn't try to delete my system, when in the same situation where apt tried.

Debian testing does not just break (or delete your system) unless *you* break your installation.

Yeah it's the user fault, it's the user that is holding the iphone wrong if there is no reception. It's never and can never be the fault of the package manager, that is perfect, FOSS and loved by Stallman.

Maybe, just maybe I'm installing stuff you don't have and maybe that stuff had packaging issues or its dependencies haven't landed yet so I got the issue while you didn't, maybe the issue was on a different (but still official) architecture like "armel" (ARM without floating point, aka ARMv5/v6 aka Kirkwood SoC devices). Debian has a huge package repository and multiple supported architectures, you know.

Personally, I think external repos or .deb packages downloaded from the web should never be fully trusted.

Tangential, this issue was observed with Debian's own repos as well.

I'm not sure if what you describe is a bug or a feature. I sometimes update packages manually. I *really* like that the repo(s) start updating the package once they catch up.

You didn't understand, zypper does update packages automatically. I was describing the "auto-package-pinning" functionality of zypper.
Zypper remembers what repo each package was first installed from (which is defined by the repo priority by default) and keeps updating it automatically from the same repo unless I request it to switch repo, so even if a repo has higher versions of the same software it won't just overwrite the ones I installed.
It will notify me if there are higher versions of the same package in some other repo, if I put such repo at higher priority than the repo the package is from,

I can do the same in Debian but for it's tedious as it's fully manual, not user-friendly as I need to look up documentation and the Debian wiki is very meh (while zypper and the GUI package manager self-explain this) and quite frankly it's beneath me as well.

If I wanted a distro that gives me full manual control over the system I'd be using Arch, as it also has a powerful and sane package manager (if a bit clunky, but I can wrap it), great documentation, and is also available for ARM devices I use.

[Fabio72]

...
Does it have undo yet?
...

I think it hasn't, but I have created a little and modest script, able to fix this lack, at least in part.

You can find it here:

https://gitlab.com/fabio.dellaria/apt-rollback

and a little demo here: