[Aptitude-devel] Bug#698335: aptitude: "aptitude why" should have a better message about non-installed packages

[Daniel Hartwig]

Control: severity -1 wishlist
Control: tags -1 + wontfix

Hello

On 17 January 2013 15:06, Alexander E. Patrakov <patrakov at gmail.com> wrote:
> Package: aptitude
> Version: 0.6.8.2-1
> Severity: minor
>
> Dear Maintainer,
>
> on this computer I don't have argyll. However, here is what aptitude
> thinks about my (obviously stupid) question about the reason why it is
> installed:

>From the man page:

  why, why-not
      Explains the reason that a particular package should or cannot
      be installed on the system.

      This command searches for packages that require or conflict
      with the given package. …

As it is “should be installed” rather than “is installed”, the
behaviour of this command is well-defined for not installed packages.

> I'd prefer this:
>
> $ aptitude why argyll
> Package 'argyll' is not installed. Here is why you may want it:
> i   bacula-fd                 Suggests   bacula-traymonitor
> p   bacula-traymonitor        Suggests   kde | gnome-desktop-environment
> p   gnome-desktop-environment Depends    gnome (>= 1:3.4+7)
> p   gnome                     Depends    gnome-color-manager (>= 3.4)
> p   gnome-color-manager       Recommends argyll
>

This produces irregular output, and is undesirable.  An alternative is
to add a final line with the status of the requested package:

  p   argyll

though that is redundant when there are multiple outputs (--verbose),
and still produces irregular output in that the final line is not the
same form as the others.

It is more preferable to keep the current behaviour.  If you want to
query whether a package is installed there are other commands for
that.

> or even just "Package 'argyll' is not installed."

Absolutely not.

Regards