Bug#131182: apt: apt-get install fails to install dependences' dependences
Package: apt
Version: 0.3.19
Severity: normal
I installed Debian potato on this clean system, and asked apt-get to
install the task-x-window-system package, which is advertised as providing
"substantially all" of the components needed. One of its dependences is
task-x-window-system-core, which in turn depends on xserver-svga. But I
didn't get xserver-xvga, and was stuck with the minimal xserver-vga16.
It took some fishing around to find that I needed to apt-get install
xserver-svga manually.
If this is a bug in apt-get (which has, until now, been a real blessing
in terms of getting what I need and keeping it up to date), it should be
fixed. Maybe it occurred only because one meta-package was requesting
another? If this is a unique special case, the easiest workaround would
be to add xserver-svga to the dependences of task-x-window-system.
But then, maybe it should be regarded as a bug in the dependences of
task-x-window-system, as most hardware these days has svga capabilities.
And couldn't some trouble have been avoided if one of the dependences
of task-x-window-system been xviddetect, which I didn't know to download
before getting into this mess?
So it's not clear to me which package this bug really belongs to; it's
a result of the interaction of several packages.
-- A. T. Young
-- System Information
Debian Release: 2.2
Kernel Version: Linux aty786 2.2.19-ide #1 Sat Jun 9 13:24:48 EST 2001 i686 unknown
Versions of the packages apt depends on:
ii libc6 2.1.3-20 GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone
ii libstdc++2.10 2.95.2-13 The GNU stdc++ library
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