Re: uninstallable despite satisfying dependencies

[Vincent Danjean <vdanjean.ml@free.fr>]

Steve Langasek wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 10, 2007 at 10:03:16PM -0500, Steve M. Robbins wrote:
>
> > How do I debug this situation: ipe won't install, yet I have the 
> > dependencies that "apt-get install" complains about.
>
> > Below, you will see that my attempt to install libipe1c2a claims to
> > have three unmet dependencies.  However, as you see by "dpkg --list",
> > I *do* have these three packages at a version that seemingly satisfies
> > the dependencies.  
>
> > What gives?
>
> > root@riemann{~}apt-get install libipe1c2a
[...]
> > The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> >   libipe1c2a: Depends: libfreetype6 (>= 2.2) but it is not going to be installed
> >               Depends: libqt4-core (>= 4.2.3) but it is not going to be installed
> >               Depends: libqt4-gui (>= 4.2.3) but it is not going to be installed
> > E: Broken packages
>
> Usually you can get a more sensible explanation out of apt-get by telling it
> to install all the packgaes together:
>
> # apt-get install libipe1c2a libfreetype6 libqt4-core libqt4-gui
> [...]
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
>   libipe1c2a: Conflicts: libfreetype6 (>= 2.2.2) but 2.3.5-1 is to be
> installed
> E: Broken packages
> [...]

Shouldn't a wishbug against apt-get be filled ? Even if I can now
understand (due to the conflict, apt-get should have decided to remove
libfreetype6 which leads to a missing dependency), the first error
message is confusing.
  I already got this situation in the past : apt-get messages where
confusing. I had to look at real depends/conflicts (apt-cache show ...)
to understand what happened.

  Best regards,
    Vincent