[Aptitude-devel] Bug#638049: aptitude forgets which packages were installed automatically

[Daniel Hartwig]

Hi

On 28 May 2012 04:10, Francesco Poli <invernomuto at paranoici.org> wrote:
> I also noticed that sometimes, aptitude says it will purge some
> packages, but actually leaves them installed (even though scheduled for
> purging), as in:
>
>  $ aptitude search ~i | grep ^.p | cut -c 1-35

This is a separate issue and should be reported with a full typescript
of the session.

Those packages should be removed if you run:

# aptitude install

>
> After searching on the BTS, it seems to me that there are a good number
> of bug reports about issues with the auto flag:
>
…
>
> I don't know why these reports are not merged together.
> Maybe they do not describe the same exact bug (even though, after
> reading all the bug histories, they still look the same issue to me...).
>

More accurately: they exhibit similar /symptoms/.

Those reports cover several different activities which cause the auto
flag to be altered unexpectedly, it is not clear they all relate to
the same underlying issue.  While some some overlap is likely, there
certainly is multiple issues causing these.

A quick look suggests that some are even inconsistent, not bugs, or
simply don't contain enough information.  But I won't merge or close
them without a more thorough investigation.

>
> Dear Aptitude Development Team, what can be done to fix this annoying
> bug (which I would consider more of severity important, than normal)?
>

Direct your efforts to the code and submit a patch.

Providing minimal test cases that demonstrate both failures and
non-failures to respect the auto flag is also useful.

At the very least, if you can reliably reproduce any of these
scenarios you should run aptitude-create-state-bundle when your system
is in the state *before* the auto-flag has been lost, then provide a
typescript moving from that state to demonstrate how the flag is lost.
 The resulting state bundle and typescript should be made available
via http or ftp and a message sent to
<aptitude-devel at lists.alioth.debian.org>