[Aptitude-devel] Bug#706770: keep/hold packages uninstalled

[Harald Dunkel]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.8.2-1
Severity: wishlist

It would be very nice if "hold" and "keep" could be extended
to work on uninstalled packages, too.

Background of the story: I have to deal a lot with container
systems (lxc, chroot, etc). They don't have any real or virtual
hardware.

Unfortunately there are tons of packages that make no sense
if the hardware is missing (apps checking the battery status,
tools to configure the hardware clock, boot loaders, pci and
usb utilities, the kernel, firmware files, etc.). Some of them
fail at run time on the container systems (I could live with
that) or at install time. Esp. painful is, when these packages
sneak in due to some dependency (Depends or Recommends).

If I could tell aptitude to keep packages uninstalled, then
this would make managing container systems a lot easier. I
could create a blacklist of packages to avoid, and yet keep
the flag for "install recommended packages automatically" on.


Regards
Harri
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)

iEYEARECAAYFAlGFKt0ACgkQUTlbRTxpHjfEYQCeKIy/bbBj0NNkrieEnZYJPxDX
MfkAnjo8szhaGdY1L9KvDb3AIzzOaIwS
=lPqi
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----