Bug#50223: dselect removes diald when it shouldn't
Package: dpkg
Version: 1.4.1.19
Severity: important
I'm using an up-to-date potato system.
The following problem with dselect and the apt method occurs reproducibly. I
don't have any ideas about how to help debug this any further, so send
suggestions if you need me to try anything.
The diald package currently depends on the fake package `netstd' (this is a
reported bug). I installed all the dependencies of `netstd' and then removed
`netstd' and some of the dependencies I didn't need on my system.
ACTION/KEYSTROKE COMMENT
% dselect run dselect
2 <RET> <SPACE> go to dselect's selection screen
<RET> <SPACE> exit dselect's selection screen; go to
conflict resolution screen: because diald
is selected, `netstd' and its dependencies,
etc. all appear in a suggested
configuration.
D choose D)irectly requested state; screen
indicates diald 'installed'; all others on
the screen 'purged' (as they have been)
Q return to dselect main menu via "confirm &
override"
<RET> select "Install": I get a message that diald
will be removed! And indeed it will be, if I
choose to continue... If I abort and return
to package selection, diald retains the
"installed" status it had before.
But this sequence of keystrokes should NOT cause diald to be removed!
It seems possible to me that this bug could lead to the too-easy removal of a
crucial system package, in which case the severity of this bug should be higher
than `important'. Diald is happily not crucial, and dselect does announce that
it is about to remove diald. But I think it is a reasonable to say that the
purpose of the messages about what dselect is about to do is to allow the user
to compare their actions in dselect with their intentions -- NOT to compare
their actions+intentions against bugs in dselect. When I have high confidence
that what I've requested in dselect is what I meant to request, as is the case
with simple operations, I see no reason to check over the warning messages.
-- System Information
Debian Release: potato
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux aleph 2.2.12 #1 Tue Oct 26 20:07:22 EDT 1999 i586
Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii libc6 2.1.2-10 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii libncurses4 4.2-3.4 Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii libstdc++2.10 1:2.95.2-3 The GNU stdc++ library
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