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Comment by apstls

3 days ago

Sounds very cool.

I wanted to try this out, so I opened Windsurf for the first time in ages and clicked the "Upgrade Available" button, which sent me to: https://windsurf.com/editor/update-linux

  Did you install using apt or apt-get? If so...
  
  1. Update package lists
  
  sudo apt-get update
  
  2. Upgrade Windsurf
  
  sudo apt-get upgrade windsurf

Whle `apt-get upgrade windsurf` will technically upgrade Windsurf, instructing users to run a command that will attempt to upgrade all packages on their system is nuts when the command is provided in a context that strongly implies it will only upgrade Windsurf and has no warnings or footnotes to the contrary. Good thing I didn't ask Windsurf's agent to ugprade itself for me, I guess.

EDIT - I don't want to detract from the topic at hand, however - after upgrading (with `sudo apt-get install --only-upgrade windsurf` :)) and playing around a bit, the Codemaps feature indeed seems very nifty and worth checking out. Good job!

21 comments

apstls

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kps  3 days ago

So `apt-get upgrade $PACKAGE` has ridiculous semantics that no one would expect, and the actual syntax for upgrading a package is in neither the man page nor the command help.

  • GuB-42  2 days ago

    I have been using Debian for literally decades and I didn't even know "apt-get upgrade $PACKAGE" existed. It is weird, it doesn't appear in the documentation, it doesn't work with the "apt" command, it means it is probably a relic of the past left there for compatibility reasons and you probably shouldn't use it.

    My guess is that someone or some LLM hallucinated this command, "apt-get upgrade" is for upgrading your system, not for upgrading a single package, and it takes no extra argument.

    For upgrading a single package, just do "apt install $PACKAGE". It is the same command as for installing. The semantics is rather clear to me, upgrading is like installing the new version on top of the old version. It also makes no sense to install a package you already have or to upgrade a package you don't have, but if you want to be sure, for example because you don't know if you already have the package installed or not, there are the --no-upgrade and --only-upgrade options.

  • normie3000  3 days ago

    > So `apt-get upgrade $PACKAGE` has ridiculous semantics that no one would expect

    Especially not an LLM!

  • pxc  3 days ago

    Sure it is¹ (kinda):

      --no-upgrade
      Do not upgrade packages; when used in conjunction with install, no-upgrade will prevent packages on the command line from being upgraded if they are already installed. Configuration Item: APT::Get::Upgrade.

    The canonical way to do the thing you want via apt-get is `apt-get install`. And if you read the man page from start to finish, it'd be clear to you... but it is tucked away there in the most obtuse, indirect, ungreppable way. :'D

    That would be a great addendum to an EXAMPLES section! In the meantime, this is documented well and clearly in the tldr page for apt-get².

    Fwiw, apt-get not only sucks, but has been known to suck for many, many years (more than a decade at least). Its interface sticks around because it's basically plumbing at this point. But you, as a user, should never use it (or `apt-cache` or `apt-*`, if you can avoid it.

    Aptitude is preferable for a whole host of reasons, not least of which being that its upgrade commands have the semantics you'd intuitively expect³. They take packages as an optional list of positional args, and upgrade everything only if you don't pass any. (Aptitude also has a ton of other nice features and I highly recommend it.)

    There's also an official new porcelain in APT itself, aptly called "apt". It preserves⁴ the semantics of apt-get's `upgrade` command, but its usage message actually matches that syntactically— hopefully it'll barf if you tell it `apt upgrade windsurf` or whatever.

    But automation needs to rely on the ugly, old, disparate APT commands that have been around forever and can't really change. That probably goes, too, for things guides want you to copy and paste, or instructions handed over to LLMs.

    (This is one reason that if you only learn to use APT from guides/tutorials whose primary concern is something other than documenting or teaching how to use Debian-based systems, you'll probably never learn to use the correct tools (the nicer, newer ones).)

    --

    1: https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/apt/apt-get.8.en.html

    2: https://tldr.inbrowser.app/pages/linux/apt-get

    3: https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/aptitude/aptitude.8.en.ht...

    4: https://manpages.debian.org/trixie/apt/apt.8.en.html

swyx  3 days ago

hiya! team noticed your comment and agreed - and it is fixed.

    - const CodeSnippetTwo = `sudo apt-get upgrade windsurf`;
    + const CodeSnippetTwo = `sudo apt-get install windsurf`;