Bug#198658: Why doesn't remove packages?

[Uwe Storbeck <uwe@ibr.ch>]

Hi Otavio,

sorry, haven't got your reply, saw it only on the web today.

I surely want to keep my sarge system up to date. But I also don't want
to loose installed packages on an upgrade by unmet dependencies.

As an example:

If I would run an apt-get dist-upgrade on my sytem today it would
remove me the (installed) package apt-listchanges. But I don't want to
loose this nice tool!

# apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Calculating Upgrade... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  apt-file* apt-listchanges* ...

So I have to say "no".

If I use apt-get upgrade it doesn't remove the package apt-listchanges,
ok. But on the other hand it does not upgrade packages which require
the installation of additional (previously not installed) packages
on upgrade.

# apt-get upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back
  ... bind9 bind9-host dnsutils ...

(requires installation of extra packages libdns11, libisc7, ...)

So I need a kind of "middle" way, an option which allows me to keep my
system up to date as much as possible without loosing already installed
packages.

It's difficult to do this with hold or pinning, because I would have to
remove the hold state or pin from time to time (on every update/upgrade
run?) to see if the unmet dependencies are resolved now.

BTW, how can a package get into testing with such basically unmet
dependencies? This state keeps on for months ...

# apt-get install apt-listchanges
...
Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies:
  apt-listchanges: Depends: python (>= 2.3) but 2.1.3-4 is to be installed

Regards

Uwe