<h2: moved from feature reports because these are not really features but either bugs or mepis specific issues>
How about option to choose sid sources and another option to choose sid and sidux sources.

I just installed antiX-M8-base-alpha with the Mepis 2.6.26-1 kernel in VB and decided to use sidux repos to install the latest sidux kernel, which it did without fault.
It would have been nice to be able to choose the sid repos as well.

BTW I noticed I wasn't given the opportunity to choose between apt or aptitude.
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antix startup is supposed to ask if you want sidux sources, and then uncomment the sid sources in sources.list.

If there are no sid sources commented out, of course, they won't get uncommented.

Because any system built with apt-get, ie, sidux or antix, shouldn't use aptitude without explicit user intervention, I'm only offering aptitude / apt-get as an option for straight Debian by default.

What happens with apt-get systems switched to aptitude is not fully predictable.

Also, of course, if you don't have aptitude installed, smxi and related scripts will not ask if you want to use it, since it's not there.

I will double check however, and remove the sidux/antix blocks if they are there for aptitude, in either case, if aptitude is installed, it should be offered as an option.
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double checked, yes, it's all in there.

Depending on the initial antix conversion option, sid sources, sidux + sid, it will add either sid sources or sid and sidux sources.

I suggest you try a vbox install of latest antix and confirm or deny this by checking sources at each step of the way.

<correction:>it doesn't uncomment the sid sources, it adds them to the proper place. That was I think an earlier draft that did that, but then I decided to make the feature global, not just re antix.

failure to work is a bug, and should be posted in the bug thread, with link to smxi.log.

<update>This is getting better, smxi is working quite well, also, for aptitude / apt-get selector, smxi merely checks for aptitude, if not installed, no choice is offered.

So that's a packaging decision in antix.

However, please make sure to read the aptitude threads, and above all, do some testing on converting, it's not fully trivial, and I will never offer automated apt-get to aptitude conversion options because the end user needs to understand this is not a random or trivial choice, and requires understanding and preparation. However, long term, I strongly urge any distros out there, including antix or mepis, to give aptitude a serious look as the base, default package manager to make the stuff future compatible.

I'd like to collect more empirical realworld data on this matter over the next few months, and I don't want to put out advice that's possibly dangerous, but so far, and all users with experience with aptitude I've talked to seem to agree, aptitude is the future.
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I just tried on a newly installed in VB antiX-base and the sidux repos are added but not the sid ones.
This is the sources.list


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Run this command on the system and show the output (it should be null for the above data):


if it's not null, show this output:


this will show which line is falsely triggering the result.

Also make sure you don't have any files in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
if you do, smxi will default to create the subfile in there instead. It always assumes that if there is a sub file, that's where the user wants their additional files put. And if there are no subfiles, it assumes you want it in /etc/apt/sources.list

It's possible your commented out thing is catching it, but it shouldn't even show.

I tested on mine if comments failed the test, and they work, so it's something else triggering the false positive id.
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Do I just copy/paste it to root terminal?

Anyhow as root or user both give no output.
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No output means that there is no sid detected in the source file. That is the correct result for what you posted, so the code is working fine. smxi should, if you selected the sid+sidux option, have added both sidux and sid sources to your /etc/apt/sources.list.

If smxi fails to add sid sources after you run, that's a bug, you'll have to post the /var/log/smxi.log at that point.

Also, I'm assuming mepis doesn't do something weird like not use /etc/apt/sources.list, or a subfile in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/...

I added more logging in that function so if it's missing something we'll know what is causing it.
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Oh, I reread the conversion lib, those sources should have gotten uncommented after all.

I was being extra careful and try both methods, first I have it uncomment it if it's commented, then it searches and replaces it.

So it would have to be failing in both cases, and that's not very likely in my opinion.

I believe the problem lies elsewhere, unless there is some absolutely glaring typo or something in the code.
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I also just tested the raw code of the conversion for antix, and it correctly uncomments the lines, assuming you don't have the lines starting with spaces, but that they are in fact starting with #

So I don't think this is an actual bug on my end, I'd start looking for something odd or unexpected in your test install.
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Here is the relevant section from smxi.log:


As you can see, adding or not the sidux repo works, but there is no mention of sid/unstable.
This is a 'new' problem as I remember it working fine in the past, ie when we first started testing smxi with antiX.
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