Bug#211075: so, exactly what is APT trying to tell us?

[Martin-Éric Racine <q-funk@iki.fi>]

... with cryptic messages such as:

E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2) on libsasl2-2

What is this immediate configuration thing all about? What can make it
fail? How do we fix it? APT documentation doesn't say much and the
above error message is too cryptic.

The only reference to this I could remotely spot was in apt.conf(5):

Immediate-Configure
           Disable Immediate Configuration; This dangerous option
disables some of APT´s ordering code to cause it to make
           fewer dpkg calls. Doing so may be necessary on some
extremely slow single user systems but is very dangerous
           and may cause package install scripts to fail or worse. Use
at your own risk.

I'm sorry, but this still doesn't tell the user what they need to know
about immediate configuration. It's also a pale substitution for
replacing the above cryptic error message with an explanation that the
user can understand and tips on how to fix the condition that prevents
APT from doing its job as normal.

-- 
Martin-Éric