Bug#336416: upgrade-reports: 'Conflicts/Pre-Depends' error when upgrading e2fsprogs

[Yitzhak Grossman <celejar@gmail.com>]

Package: upgrade-reports
Severity: grave
Justification: renders package unusable


Trying to upgrade e2fsprogs from version 1.35-6 to version 1.38-2 failed with a 'Pre-Depends / Conflicts' error and a suggestion that enabling APT::Force-LoopBreak might work. According to man apt.conf(5):

 Force-LoopBreak
              Never Enable this option unless you -really- know what you are doing. It  per-
              mits  APT to temporarily remove an essential package to break a Conflicts/Con-
              flicts or Conflicts/Pre-Depend loop between two  essential  packages.  SUCH  A
              LOOP  SHOULD  NEVER  EXIST  AND  IS  A GRAVE BUG. This option will work if the
              essential packages are not tar, gzip, libc, dpkg, bash or anything that  those
              packages depend on.

I therefore report this 'GRAVE BUG' :).
I subsequently enabled Force-LoopBreak and the upgrade proceeded smoothly. I posted to d-u@l.d.o and another user reported the identical experience with his e2fsprogs upgrade.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i586)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-2-386
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)