Re: explanation of first column "v" is hiding

[Richard Hector <richard@walnut.gen.nz>]

On 27/07/21 5:22 am, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> P.S. If we're complaining about the lack of documentation for the cryptic
> output of the Debian tool set, can we say some words about aptitude?
> Seriously.
>
>             This command searches for packages that require or conflict with
>             the given package. It displays a sequence of dependencies leading
>             to the target package, along with a note indicating the installed
>             state of each package in the dependency chain:
>
>                 $ aptitude why kdepim
>                 i   nautilus-data Recommends nautilus
>                 i A nautilus      Recommends desktop-base (>= 0.2)
>                 i A desktop-base  Suggests   gnome | kde | xfce4 | wmaker
>                 p   kde           Depends    kdepim (>= 4:3.4.3)
>
> What do *any* of those column-ish letters mean?  I can guess "i", maybe,
> but not "A" or "p".  (I might have guessed "purged" for "p", but that
> doesn't seem to fit the picture being painted by the example, which is
> of a system that *does* have KDE installed.  In any case, why should I
> have to guess these things?)

My main issue with aptitude documentation is that most of it isn't in 
the manpage, but in the 'aptitude reference manual' which is referred to 
without a link. The path given in the SEE ALSO section might be that, 
but it doesn't say so.

But experience suggests that A means 'automatically installed' (and p 
stands for purged, which linguistically doesn't really mean 'maybe has 
been purged; maybe has never been installed').

Cheers,
Richard