[Aptitude-devel] Bug#740009: aptitude: auto-installed package, depended on by non-installed virtual package provider, not removed

[Zack Weinberg]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.10-1
Severity: normal

On a (deliberately minimal) system with bsd-mailx, nullmailer, and
libpcre3 installed, but nothing that actually depends on libpcre3
installed, and libpcre3 set to auto-installed, libpcre3 will not be
autoremoved, because:

# aptitude why libpcre3
i   bsd-mailx          Depends  default-mta | mail-transport-agent
p   exim4-daemon-light Provides mail-transport-agent
p   exim4-daemon-light Depends  libpcre3 (>= 8.10)

It looks as if the dependency solver is not paying attention to which
concrete package is satisfying bsd-mailx's dependency on
mail-transport-agent on this system.  A manual 'aptitude purge
libpcre3' went through without complaint.

-- Package-specific info:
Terminal: xterm
$DISPLAY is set.
which aptitude: /usr/bin/aptitude

aptitude version information:
aptitude 0.6.10 compiled at Feb 20 2014 17:26:22
Compiler: g++ 4.8.2
Compiled against:
  apt version 4.12.0
  NCurses version 5.9
  libsigc++ version: 2.2.11
  Ept support enabled.
  Gtk+ support disabled.
  Qt support disabled.

Current library versions:
  NCurses version: ncurses 5.9.20140118
  cwidget version: 0.5.16
  Apt version: 4.12.0

aptitude linkage:
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff5849b000)
	libapt-pkg.so.4.12 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.4.12 (0x00007f4f5688b000)
	libncursesw.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.5 (0x00007f4f56656000)
	libtinfo.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.5 (0x00007f4f5642b000)
	libsigc-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsigc-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f4f56226000)
	libcwidget.so.3 => /usr/lib/libcwidget.so.3 (0x00007f4f55f1f000)
	libept.so.1.aptpkg4.12 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libept.so.1.aptpkg4.12 (0x00007f4f55cc2000)
	libxapian.so.22 => /usr/lib/libxapian.so.22 (0x00007f4f558c4000)
	libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f4f556ac000)
	libsqlite3.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so.0 (0x00007f4f553ef000)
	libboost_iostreams.so.1.54.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_iostreams.so.1.54.0 (0x00007f4f551d5000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f4f54fb8000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f4f54cb3000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f4f549b0000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f4f5479a000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f4f543f0000)
	libutil.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libutil.so.1 (0x00007f4f541ed000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f4f53fe9000)
	libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x00007f4f53dd8000)
	libuuid.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007f4f53bd3000)
	librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f4f539ca000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f4f57215000)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.12-1-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.6.10-1
ii  libapt-pkg4.12            0.9.15.4
ii  libboost-iostreams1.54.0  1.54.0-4+b1
ii  libc6                     2.18-3
ii  libcwidget3               0.5.16-5
ii  libept1.4.12              1.0.12
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.8.2-16
ii  libncursesw5              5.9+20140118-1
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.2.11-3
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.8.3.1-1
ii  libstdc++6                4.8.2-16
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9+20140118-1
ii  libxapian22               1.2.17-1
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.8.dfsg-1

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  apt-xapian-index                0.46
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.6.10-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   1.2.0-1
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.9

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
pn  debtags  <none>
ii  tasksel  3.20

-- no debconf information