Bug#612280: apt: Can't find out why dist-upgrade wants to install new packages

[Sam Morris <sam@robots.org.uk>]

On Mon, 2011-02-07 at 14:03 +0100, David Kalnischkies wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 12:55, Sam Morris <sam@robots.org.uk> wrote:
> > While debugging #492863 and #493655 I found that 'apt-get dist-upgrade'
> > wants to install two obsolete packages. I can't find any combination of
> > debugging options to tell me why this is though.
> 
> It is because these 'obsolete packages' are 'Essential: yes' in lenny and
> APT installs all essential packages of all archives you have in your source
> lists to avoid problems you could have with packages depending on the
> functionality of these not installed essential packages as you could install
> packages from these archives on your system which need these
> essential packages (but do not declare this dependency as they are
> essential in this archive) otherwise.

Wow. I think my head just exploded after I managed to parse that
sentence, but after I picked up the pieces I think I understand. Thanks
for the explanation.

> In this case its more or less non-sense as the functionality is still provided
> by a package with a different name, but APT can't know this from the
> data it has, so it plays safe.
> 
> In short: just remove lenny sources and APT will stop doing this.
> (or use the not-recommend not-documented debug option to disable it)
> 
> See #216768 and his friends for further details.
> 
> As we have a lot of bugs discussing this i am closing this one as it
> doesn't provide any further value. I hope you can agree.

Of course. Thanks again!

> 
> Best regards
> 
> David Kalnischkies

-- 
Sam Morris <sam@robots.org.uk>