Re: How to get out of a "...but it is not going to be installed"-type situation with apt-get?

[Kynn Jones <kynnjo@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 11:00 AM, The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> wrote:
> Assuming you don't actually have any package holds (check 'apt-mark
> showhold' to verify that), and since you've already confirmed that you
> don't have any seemingly-applicable pins:
>
> Append one or more of the listed packages to the 'apt-get install'
> command line, and see what you get; repeat as necessary. (You may well
> eventually end up having to specify all of them.)
>
> In the end, you will probably wind up with an error stating that one
> package's dependencies conflict with those of another; this most
> commonly happens with versioned dependencies. From there, you can
> specify install / remove actions for those two packages explicitly, in
> order to break the dependency-resolution deadlock.
>
> If you're lucky, you can often shortcut this by looking at the
> dependency / conflict lists of the named packages directly, via
> 'apt-cache show' or similar.
>
>
> Alternatively, if you know (or are willing to learn) how to use
> aptitude's curses interface, it can do some of the work for you. Run
> just 'aptitude' with no arguments, and refer to the program's internal
> help documentation as needed; I'm only loosely familiar with it myself,
> so I can't really guide you very well, but I've used it a few times to
> track down and resolve such issues in the past.
>
> There's a relatively steep learning curve to the aptitude curses
> interface, or so it seems to me, but it does seem to be fairly powerful
> once you've gotten your head far enough around it.


Thanks for the detailed response.  It gives me much to work with.

kj