[Aptitude-devel] Bug#671439: aptitude have unmet dependencies on libapt-pkg4.10 on alpha and other archs

[Witold Baryluk]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.6-1
Severity: normal


When trying to install aptitude I get:

a02:~# LC_ALL=C apt-get install aptitude -d
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
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:
 aptitude : Depends: libapt-pkg4.10 but it is not installable
            Depends: libept1 but it is not going to be installed
            Recommends: aptitude-doc-en but it is not going to be installed or
                        aptitude-doc
            Recommends: libparse-debianchangelog-perl but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.





This is because libapt-pkg4.12 is installed due new version of apt.

On other architectures aptitude have correct dependencies, but on alpha and few others,
it still depends on libapt-pkg4.10 which was actually virtually provided by apt.

Now with newer version of apt, libapt-pkg is separate real package,
and apt is depending on it. It also cannot be coinstalled with previous
versions (because it was virtual is one of the reasons).

I think aptitude should just depend on libapt-pkg4.12 probably.
Why alpha, hppa and this few other archs (most of them are unofficial ports) have 
this separate depenency in first place?


Regards,
Witek




a02:~# dpkg -l  | grep apt
ii  apt                                            0.9.2                           commandline package manager
ii  apt-utils                                      0.9.2                           package managment related utility programs
ii  libapt-inst1.5:alpha                           0.9.2                           deb package format runtime library
ii  libapt-pkg4.12:alpha                           0.9.2                           package managment runtime library

a02:~# apt-cache show apt | grep 'Depends'
Depends: libapt-pkg4.12 (>= 0.8.16~exp9), libc6.1 (>= 2.4), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libstdc++6 (>= 4.6), debian-archive-keyring, gnupg

a02:~# apt-cache show aptitude | grep 'Depends'
Depends: apt (>= 0.8.12), libapt-pkg4.10, libboost-iostreams1.48.0 (>= 1.48.0-1), libc6.1 (>= 2.4), libcwidget3, libept1, libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libncursesw5 (>= 5.6+20070908), libsigc++-2.0-0c2a (>= 2.0.2), libsqlite3-0 (>= 3.6.5), libstdc++6 (>= 4.6), libtinfo5, libxapian22, zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4)

a02:~# LC_ALL=C apt-cache show libapt-pkg4.10
N: Can't select versions from package 'libapt-pkg4.10' as it is purely virtual
N: No packages found
a02:~# 




-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unreleased
  APT policy: (500, 'unreleased'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: alpha

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-1-alpha-generic
Locale: LANG=pl_PL.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=pl_PL.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  apt                       0.9.2
ii  libapt-pkg4.10            <none>
ii  libboost-iostreams1.48.0  <none>
ii  libc6.1                   2.13-27
ii  libcwidget3               <none>
ii  libept1                   <none>
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.7.0-7
ii  libncursesw5              5.9-7
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.2.10-0.1
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.7.11-3
ii  libstdc++6                4.7.0-7
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9-7
ii  libxapian22               1.2.8-1
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.6.dfsg-2

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  apt-xapian-index                0.45
ii  aptitude-doc-en | aptitude-doc  <none>
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   <none>
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.6

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
pn  debtags  <none>
pn  tasksel  <none>