Bug#738326: Summary of reassigned bug

[Daniel Hartwig <mandyke@gmail.com>]

On 24 February 2014 13:09, Daniel Dickinson
<cshore@cshore.neomailbox.net> wrote:
> On 23/02/14 08:00 PM, David Kalnischkies wrote:
>> As far as I know 'aptitude why' displays the first reason it can find
>> and for aptitude suggests are a reason. They aren't automatically
>> installed by it though (but apt/aptitude have an option for it).
>> why more describes why a package isn't autoremoved…
>
> Ok, so it's possible that if there are multiple reasons that aptitude
> why wouldn't show the real one but the first one it found?  In that case
> I will fire up aptitude and see if the info screen that lists why a
> package got installed

The information about why the solver chooses to install a particular
package is not available once that installation is complete.

This command shows possible reasons why the package should be
installed (or for keeping the package installed) based on the current
state of things.  In some situations, that is equivalent to what you
are looking for, but there are times when it is not.  In particular,
this is not a crystal ball that gazes inside some past instance of the
dependency solver.

> (and IIRC includes every path, not just the first)
> has what I'm looking for.  I guess I kind of assumed that aptitude why
> would show all reasons.
>

>From the manual:

 By default aptitude outputs only the “most installed, strongest,
 tightest, shortest” dependency chain.

To view all of the possible reasons, use --verbose.

Regards