[ale] Evolution strangeness

[DJ-Pfulio]

APT is just a library that manages the APT DB. apt-get, synaptic, aptitude are
the front-ends normally used. I don't understand what "force install/update
order" means. The APT dependencies are automatically resolved and all
dependencies are handled for each package in the necessary order.  Only time
this breaks is when someone installs a .deb file manually using dpkg directly.
Don't do that. It will lock the dependencies and within a few months your
apt-get update will start having issues and get screwed.  Using trusted,
maintained, PPAs is a viable solution, but when/if a PPA isn't maintained,
similar dependency issues can arise.  Sadly, the damage is usually months old
before anyone sees these problems. Resolving apt-hell (or RPM-hell) issues has
always been a little guesswork and luck.  Sometimes there doesn't appear to be
any solution short of dumping the list of installed packages and reinstalling
the OS, then importing the desired packages from that list dumped on the prior
install.  If you are careful, this is never necessary. If you install .deb files
directly, it is a 50/50 chance of bad things happening in the future on a
desktop. For servers that don't get modified much, those risks drop greatly, IME.

Order of preference:
1) always use the official repos whenever possible.
2) if you must, use the developer's PPA (avoid untrusted/unsigned PPAs)
3) if you can't use 1 or 2, install using a .deb file, but know the risks.
4) No .deb package? Install from source. Know that YOU are the maintainer of the
software now.
5) Binary installer? Ewwww. Yuk.  Avoid, avoid, avoid.  Unless that is the only
reason for the system to exist.  It has been awhile for me, but tools like
Oracle RDBMS and Oracle Java fell into this category last time I checked.
Commercial software usually does too.  My Zimbra setup falls into this group.

I use apt-get 99% of the time and aptitude if apt-get gets confused. Aptitude
will try harder to resolve dependencies and not screw up systems.  That is
especially important when you want mariaDB and the package maintainer thinks
everyone should be using MySQL.  Aptitude can be amazing.

Did I get anything wrong here?


Tried Evolution for a few minutes 10 yrs ago. Felt like Outlook to me - big and
heavy. Purged. Using Thunderbird with Lightning addon for calendaring and have
for longer than I can recall. Used Netscape Mail before that.


On 02/08/2016 11:11 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> Updated recently? Mail is imap or pop? Provider?
> 
> Often a yum reinstall evolution resolves things. Also works the the stupid gnome
> "an error has occurred. Can't continue" message on login and sometimes before. I
> thing the configs are order dependent and a reinstall fixes the ordering.
> 
> I say it's bad design and a package management issue. Don't know a way to force
> install/update order with rpm/yum.
> 
> Does apt have a sorting order that's configurable?
>