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Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages

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On Wed, 23 May 2018 13:52:38 +0000 John Horne said:

> Wow! I know nothing about Debian's internals, but you're saying that one
> command (dpkg) will use different mechanisms and which one is used depends on
> the command options used. That seems really confusing!

Sometimes it's confusing for me too.

As I understand it (and I may be wrong), dpkg is the low level package
management tool, while dselect (practically obsolete) and apt are high level
ones. As a legacy, dpkg has some organic integration with dselect, such as
keeping dselect's package selection status (which should have nothing to do
with dpkg per-se). OTOH apt keeps its own package status database separately.
Now that dselect is being phased out into legacy, dpkg's residual dselect
integration features seem out of place and confusing. There may be better /
more correct explanations, but this is the best I have.

In my current system dselect is not installed but available in repositories for
installation. I don't know if it has been used one-shot during initial system
installation. The fact that there is /var/lib/dpkg/available file suggests so.

So I prefer ignoring dselect and the residue it left in dpkg.

I would be glad to learn more, if someone with more insight explains it better.

Regards
-- 
Abdullah Ramazanoğlu

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Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages Greg Wooledge <wooledg@eeg.ccf.org> - 2018-05-21 19:10 +0200
  Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages Abdullah Ramazanoğlu <ar018@yahoo.com> - 2018-05-21 20:00 +0200
    Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages John Horne <john.horne@plymouth.ac.uk> - 2018-05-22 17:10 +0200
      Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages Abdullah Ramazanoğlu <ar018@yahoo.com> - 2018-05-22 19:00 +0200
        Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages John Horne <john.horne@plymouth.ac.uk> - 2018-05-23 19:30 +0200
          Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages Abdullah Ramazanoğlu <ar018@yahoo.com> - 2018-05-23 21:10 +0200
  Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages John Horne <john.horne@plymouth.ac.uk> - 2018-05-22 13:50 +0200

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