Hello Daniel,

# man apt-get

(german translation) doesn't tell anything else. apt-get upgrade
upgrades ALL installed packages.

Kind regards

Frank

Daniel Roberts:

Hello,

I've run into this a few times over the years and it can be a headache
to resolve.

Passing a package name to "apt-get update" results in the response "E:
The update command takes no arguments". However, passing a package name
to "apt-get upgrade" results in the argument being ignored and all
packages upgraded.

Is there some reason that this is the case? Is it a bug that has always existed and never fixed?

Dan

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Daniel Roberts composed on 2024-10-24 13:19 (UTC-0400):

I've run into this a few times over the years and it can be a headache to resolve.

Passing a package name to "apt-get update" results in the response "E: The update command takes no arguments". However, passing a package name to "apt-get upgrade" results in the argument being ignored and all packages upgraded.

Is there some reason that this is the case? Is it a bug that has
always existed and never fixed?

It's not like dnf or zypper or urpmi. If you wish to upgrade a package, you apt-get install it, to replace the existing version with the current version. Upgrading is a distro process, not a package process, as is updating. Updating is
for the mirror information that upgrade and install processes need, not already installed packages.
--
Evolution as taught in public schools is, like religion,
based on faith, not based on science.

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata

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Actually the english version of "man apt-get" in the case of "upgrade"
writes the following:

upgrade
           upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages currently installed on the system from the sources enumerated
in /etc/apt/sources.list. Packages currently
           installed with new versions available are retrieved and upgraded; under no circumstances are currently installed packages
removed, or packages not already installed retrieved
           and installed. New versions of currently installed packages
that cannot be upgraded without changing the install status of another
package will be left at their current version.
           An update must be performed first so that apt-get knows that
new versions of packages are available.

*****           When a package is supplied as an argument, the package will be installed prior to the upgrade action.  ****

Aldo


On 10/24/24 19:46, Frank Weißer wrote:

Hello Daniel,

# man apt-get

(german translation) doesn't tell anything else. apt-get upgrade
upgrades ALL installed packages.

Kind regards

Frank

Daniel Roberts:

Hello,

I've run into this a few times over the years and it can be a
headache to resolve.

Passing a package name to "apt-get update" results in the
response "E: The update command takes no arguments". However, passing
a package name to "apt-get upgrade" results in the argument being
ignored and all packages upgraded.

Is there some reason that this is the case? Is it a bug that has
always existed and never fixed?

Dan

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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On Thu 24 Oct 2024 at 13:19:13 (-0400), Daniel Roberts wrote:

I've run into this a few times over the years and it can be a headache to resolve.

Passing a package name to "apt-get update" results in the response "E: The update command takes no arguments". However, passing a package name to "apt-get upgrade" results in the argument being ignored and all packages upgraded.

Is there some reason that this is the case? Is it a bug that has
always existed and never fixed?

I can't provoke this bug, so we'd need to see your command line
and the output. AIUI the … upgrade package facility hasn't been
described in the man page until the extra sentence was added in
trixie (see Aldo's post), and even there it's absent from the
SYNOPSIS section.

So from a system still running bullseye, and lacking dhelp:

# apt-get upgrade dhelp
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
dhelp libappconfig-perl libcgi-fast-perl libcgi-pm-perl
libclass-accessor-chained-perl libclass-accessor-perl
libdata-page-perl libfcgi-bin libfcgi-perl libfcgi0ldbl
libtemplate-perl swish++
The following packages will be upgraded:
ghostscript ghostscript-doc ghostscript-x libgs9 libgs9-common
libheif1 libsepol1
7 upgraded, 12 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 1312 kB/13.1 MB of archives.
After this operation, 3533 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
[ … … … ]
Setting up ghostscript-x (9.53.3~dfsg-7+deb11u8) ...
Setting up libdata-page-perl (2.03-1) ...
Setting up libtemplate-perl (2.27-1+b3) ...
Setting up dhelp (0.6.27) ...

Creating config file /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/35dhelp with new version
Building HTML tree... done.
Reindexing documentation in the background
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.31-13+deb11u11) ...
Processing triggers for man-db (2.9.4-2) ...
Processing triggers for mailcap (3.69) ...
Processing triggers for doc-base (0.11.1) ...
Processing 1 changed doc-base file...
Registering documents with dhelp...
[master b5383c9] committing changes in /etc made by "apt-get upgrade dhelp"
8 files changed, 209 insertions(+)
create mode 100644 apache2/conf-available/dhelp.conf
create mode 100644 apache2/conf.d/dhelp.conf
create mode 100644 apt/apt.conf.d/35dhelp
create mode 100755 cron.monthly/dhelp
create mode 100755 cron.weekly/dhelp
create mode 100644 dhelp.conf
create mode 100644 lighttpd/conf-available/95-dhelp.conf
Scanning processes...
Scanning processor microcode...
Scanning linux images...

Running kernel seems to be up-to-date.

The processor microcode seems to be up-to-date.

No services need to be restarted.

No containers need to be restarted.

No user sessions are running outdated binaries.
#

Cheers,
David.

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