Re: Buster and apt wanting to remove tons of packages...
On Tue, 2018-07-10 at 10:13 -0400, The Wanderer wrote:
> If I were experiencing a similar situation, what I'd do is try to
> simultaneously install both one of the packages that triggers the
> cascade and one or more of the packages which the cascade wants to
> remove, and keep adding packages to the install command until I get a
> dependency-resolution failure.
>
> E.g., assuming that trying to upgrade 'vim' triggers the cascade and the
> cascade wants to remove calibre, evolution, and pidgin:
>
> $ apt-get install vim calibre evolution pidgin
>
> (In case it wasn't obvious: an 'install' operation on an
> already-installed package which has a newer available version triggers
> an install of that newer version, i.e., an upgrade.)
>
> If you get a successful upgrade attempt which doesn't trigger the
> cascade, you can let it proceed, then try the mass upgrade again. If the
> mass upgrade still produces the cascade, you can repeat the
> some-small-subset-of-packages manual install process.
>
> If on the other hand the manual install command *does* trigger the
> cascade, you should cancel it and add more package names to the install
> command.
>
> Keep repeating those two until either the cascade disappears from the
> mass-upgrade attempt, or you get a "request cannot be fulfilled"
> dependency-resolution failure.
>
> If the cascade disappears along the way, you're in good shape; just
> complete the mass upgrade. (Unfortunately, this doesn't really help
> figure out what caused the bug in the first place.)
>
> If you get a dependency-resolution failure, the packages involved should
> give you a hint about which packages have dependency relationships which
> are leading to the cascade.
This seems like a long work, but it's a path I did not think about, maybe
I'll try this steps, thank you for the hint!
> The next step involves looking at those packages and their dependency
> relationships, and I can't describe the process very well without a
> real-world example to hand.
Yes, I know, but listing the hundreds and hundreds of packages involved
can be annoying for the mailing list... :)
> Once you've identified the dependency relationship which resulted in the
> cascade, it's probably fairly straightforward to determine what bug
> report to file and what package to file it against.
If I'll manage to point the finger to the package that triggers all this mess,
I'll do a bug report.
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