Bug#57540: apt: apt-get should be more verbose

[<jan@petteflet.home.ml.org>]

Package: apt
Priority: wishlist
Version: 0.3.10slink11

I want to (maybe) use APT to upgrade my slink system to potato.
Therefore I wanted to check how many Megs I need to download.

First I tried "apt -s dist-upgrade". However that isn't a real dry-run
(it does not give the same output as the real version). In particular it does
not say anything about the download size like the real version does.

So I typed "apt dist-upgrade" knowing that I could answer no at the
download confirmation prompt. Then it complained that I didn't have enough
diskspace available on my /var partion. But it didn't say how much it wanted!
(Does it want to download all packages before starting the upgrade?)

I shuffled some stuff around and then it was sufficient, but it wanted to
remove far to much for my taste (among them gnome-session). Then it said..

============
Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
  gnome-session: Depends: libgnome32 (>= 1.0.54-1) but it is not installed
                 Depends: libgnomesupport0 (>= 1.0.54-1) but it is not installed
                 Depends: libgnomeui32 (>= 1.0.54-1) but it is not installed
                 Depends: libgtk1.2 (>= 1.2.6-1) but it is not installed
                 Depends: gnome-core (>= 1.0.55-1) but it is not installed
                 Depends: gnome-panel but it is not installed
===========

So I typed

===========
petteflet:/scratch/builds/apt-0.3.16# apt-get install libgnome32   
Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
  libgnome32: Depends: gnome-bin (>= 1.0.54-2) but it is not installed
   

However, all of these gnome-bin is available in potato. It turns out
gnome-bin can not be installed becuase it indirectly depends on libgtk1.2
which is the real problem.

Can apt be changed so that it much more verbose, i.e.

- Let "-s" provide at least as much info as the normal version
- Report what you need when complaining about diskspace shortage.
- In case of unforfillable dependencies, display where in the tree the
problem is.

Sorry for being such a drag. Apt is very very nice. I just want it to be perfect!

Thanks for all the good work,

Jan

The libgtk1.2 is a real problem with apt that I'll report after compiling the latest apt from source


-- System Information
Debian Release: 2.1
Kernel Version: Linux petteflet 2.2.14pre7 #1 Sat Nov 20 20:00:55 CET 1999 i586 unknown

Versions of the packages apt depends on:
ii  libc6           2.0.7.19981211 GNU C Library: shared libraries
ii  libstdc++2.9    2.91.66-0slink The GNU stdc++ library (egcs version)