Bug#1065831: apt tries to uninstall kde & plasma (full-upgrade)

Hi Wesley,

>This problem isn't because of apt, the problem is that gdb-minimal/gdb
> dependencies cannot be satified. A full-upgrade is the equivalent of a
> dist-upgrade which will remove packages to resolve the dependencies. The

> problem you are facing is the t64 transition[1][2] where not all packages are
> transitioned.

I haven't detected any "gdb | gdb-minimal dependencies that can't be satisfied at this point. Everything seems to be OK with those packages.

> My advice to you is: don't expect full-upgrade to work until the transitioning
> is done.

You nail it here! I have managed to upgrade package by package but it is a tedious process until the whole transition is completed. But "apt upgrade" should not remove any packages according to its documentation (man apt)

"upgrade is used to install available upgrades of all packages currently installed on the system from the sources configured via sources.list(5). New packages will be installed if required to satisfy dependencies, but existing packages will never be removed. If an upgrade for apackage requires the remove of an installed package the upgrade for thispackage isn't performed."

Why is this t64 upgrade working then as it is removing deprecated packages for *t64 packages?

> This seems to be an more of an actual issue where dependencies are declared but
> apt doing something weird. But that is an issue on bookworm where we aren't
> getting poluted results because of a transitioning.

I'm glad you were able to replicate in bookworm (stable) it but I don't think (at least in this case) it is related to the t64 transition. Same errors on both distributions and I checked that gdb dependencies were satisfied in unstable (I don't have a system running stable).

> I don't know either and that question should be redirected to the
> plasma-workspace maintainer.

good advice! I will.

Appreciate your support.

Thanks!

On Sun, Mar 10, 2024 at 8:20 PM Wesley Schwengle <wesley@schwengle.net> wrote:

On Sun, Mar 10, 2024 at 02:13:34PM +0100, Miguel Angel wrote:

> # apt full-upgrade
> Reading package lists... Done
> Building dependency tree... Done
> Reading state information... Done
> Calculating upgrade... Error!
> Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
> requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
> distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
> or been moved out of Incoming.
> The following information may help to resolve the situation:
>
> The following packages have unmet dependencies:
> plasma-workspace : Depends: gdb-minimal but it is not going to be installed or
> gdb
> E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
>

This problem isn't because of apt, the problem is that gdb-minimal/gdb
dependencies cannot be satified. A full-upgrade is the equivalent of a
dist-upgrade which will remove packages to resolve the dependencies. The
problem you are facing is the t64 transition[1][2] where not all packages are
transitioned.

My advice to you is: don't expect full-upgrade to work until the transitioning
is done. You can do `apt upgrade' without too much hassle. If you feel like it
you can inspect individual upgrades possibilities via `apt list --upgradable'
and upgrade each package individually. That has worked well for me in the past
week with aptitude, but it requires going through many offered solutions.

> I've seen other users are experimenting the same issue:
> https://groups.google.com/g/linux.debian.user/c/7gpQImSH-Cs

This seems to be an more of an actual issue where dependencies are declared but
apt doing something weird. But that is an issue on bookworm where we aren't
getting poluted results because of a transitioning. It differs from yours
because your apt output says "gdb-minimal but it is not going to be installed
or gdb" so apt sees the alternative, but cannot install it either. IMHO, that should
be filed as a seperate bug against apt on bookworm. And if possible checked on
testing as well. FWIW, I can reproduce it on bookwork with apt, apt-get and
aptitude, where the latter offers a solution to install gdb and not deinstall
plasma-workspace.

> I don't know why plasma-workspace depends on gdb

I don't know either and that question should be redirected to the
plasma-workspace maintainer.

Cheers,
Wesley

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2024/02/msg00000.html
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1b2ncdn/64bit_time_t_transition_in_progress_in_unstable/