Bug#217421: apt: Differentiate between REMOVED and REPLACED

[Jeffrey Austen <jausten@tntech.edu>]

On 2003.10.24 10:21 Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> I assume you mean something like dselect's "Obsolete packages" feature?

No. That shows something different.

Many packages are removed when upgrading. For example, console-common 
replaced console-tools and console-data but when looking at what apt-get 
dist-upgrade outputs all I can figure out is that console-tools and 
console-data are removed. Only after some work can I determine that the 
packages are actually replaced but the functionality remains. Continuing the 
example, eeyes is removed because of a conflict with another package but 
there is no replacement. I cannot determine whether or not a replacement 
exists without a fair amount of work. What I would like to see is instead of
   The following packages are REMOVED: console-tools, console-data, eeyes.
is this
   The following packages are REPLACED by other packages: console-tools, 
console-data.
   The following packages are REMOVED: eeyes.
Then I know which ones are important to look into to determine whether or not 
I need to find a replacement for the removed packages. The necessary 
information to do this is in the package files in the Conflicts, Provides, 
and Replaces fields.

Jeff