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

[Axel Beckert]

Control: tag -1 + wontfix

Hi David,

thanks for your insight!

David Kalnischkies wrote:
> > 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

So aptitude likely won't be able to do so either.

> 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.

Actually apt-get works by far better than aptitude with working on
non-broken packages while some non-related packages are broken,
probably because aptitude always takes the whole package list into
account (which also makes it slower on startup). But yes, I can't
remember that apt-get would not care about related broken packages...

apt-get seems only to care about all packages on commands like
"apt-get install -f" and friends.

And actually that's what I had in mind that aptitude doesn't support
broken packages by design. It tries to fix them _always_, not only
with a "-f".

> Upgrading systems is already very similar to juggling chainsaws,

I disagree here. I think it's less dangerous. ;-) I'd compare it with
rock-climbing, maybe bouldering.

> So from an APT point of view: Hell no, wontfix, close.

Tagged it wontfix for now. I'll leave the final decision (i.e. the
closing or tag removing) to Daniel.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
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