Bug#246504: apt-get -s remove displays irritating version information

[Hagen von Eitzen <hve@blasberg-computer.de>]

Package: apt
Version: 0.5.4
Severity: minor

I had expected that
apt-get -s remove packagename 
would display the currently installed version of packages to be removed.
Instead, the version number of the best downloadable/installable version
is displayed.

Example:
Assume we have example-package version 1.23 installed.

 # apt-get -s remove example-package
 Reading Package Lists... Done
 Building Dependency Tree... Done
 The following packages will be REMOVED:
   example-package
 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0  not upgraded.
 Remv example-package (1.23 Debian:3.0r2/stable)

is as expected.
But after apt-get update (without apt-get upgrade, i.e. with no changes
made to the installation!), I might get

 # apt-get -s remove example-package
 Reading Package Lists... Done
 Building Dependency Tree... Done
 The following packages will be REMOVED:
   example-package 
 0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0  not upgraded.
 Remv example-package (2.46 Debian:3.0r2/stable)

Hence, the version displayed is the one available for upgrade, not the
one that would be removed by  apt-get remove example-package.

-- System Information
Debian Release: 3.0
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux ns.blasberg-computer.de 2.4.18-bf2.4 #1 Mon Apr 12 11:37:50 UTC 2004 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii  libc6                  2.3.2.ds1-11      GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 1:2.95.4-11woody1 The GNU stdc++ library