[Aptitude-devel] Bug#721818: Bug#721818: Should allow to install/remove packages even when dependencies are broken

[David Kalnischkies]

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 12:49 PM, Yuri D'Elia <yuri.delia at eurac.edu> wrote:
> When using unstable/experimental I sometimes *need* to break dependencies.

No. Even in unstable/experimental there is no reason to have a broken system.
If there is it is a glaring bug in the packages which require it and its a
feature that these packages are not installable and/or removed.

I am an unstable users myself for years and never had the need to break the
system. Either the package manager can work out a valid solution or I wait
6 hours for the next dinstall run to bring in a valid solution. Everything else
is not worth the pain.


> I'd like to have something akin to the "Yes, I am aware this is a very bad
> idea" prompt and/or an option to proceed when I'm already in preview and I'm
> pressing "g" again.

I don't know about aptitude internals that much, but it is using libapt and
this library is not really supporting broken environments and I doubt we
would accept patches to make it support those as it would probably complicate
codepaths further which are already way to complex as it is.

Upgrading systems is already very similar to juggling chainsaws,
I don't see what we would gain by switch them on.

So from an APT point of view: Hell no, wontfix, close.
But this bugreport is against aptitude, so feel free to disagree of course.


Best regards

David Kalnischkies