[Aptitude-devel] weird aptitude behavior with "grub" package?

[Daniel Burrows]

On Sat, Sep 05, 2009 at 04:25:03PM +0900, Miles Bader <miles at gnu.org> was heard to say:
> Sven Joachim <svenjoac at gmx.de> writes:
> >> (I _can_ install "grub-pc" explicitly, so there's no obvious conflict)
> >
> > There is, grub-pc conflicts with grub.  I'll file a bug report on that
> > issue.
> 
> Hmm.
> 
> Shouldn't this sort of situation cause _some_ kind of complaint from
> aptitude?  I mean, it just removes the "grub" package despite it not
> being marked "auto", and _doesn't_ attempt to replace it with anything
> else.

  The problem is most likely the apt greedy resolver: in addition to
automatically marking dependencies for installation, it also tries to
remove conflicts.  aptitude has always used the greedy resolver (by
default), and I would at least want to think a little before I disabled
it.

  That said: the latest version of apt allows client code to suppress
specific actions of the greedy resolver.  I'll make a quick tweak to
disable removal by default; aptitude's own resolver should really be
handling any changes that cause a package to be removed.

  Daniel