[Aptitude-devel] Bug#768047: aptitude: doesn't inform a user that a package will no longer receive updates when it obsolete in the target suite, but not yet for an older suite

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]

Perhaps for open discussion:

I would think the proper definition for "obsolete package" would be:
A package that, under the current apt_preference policies, would no
longer be installed (in that version) and/or no longer receive updates.


If there's only one suite/repo, than this is of course equal to "cannot
be longer downloaded", which however is of little use for an admin.

Under multi-suite/repo configurations, with package pinning, complex
apt_preference configurations, etc. this definition would already match
for my lcms1 example:
# apt-cache policy liblcms-utils
liblcms-utils:
  Installed: 1.19.dfsg2-1.5+b2
  Candidate: 1.19.dfsg2-1.5+b2
  Version table:
*** 1.19.dfsg2-1.5+b2 0
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.19.dfsg-1.2 0
          1 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable/main amd64 Packages

in contrast to:

# apt-cache policy aptitude 
aptitude:
  Installed: 0.6.11-1
  Candidate: 0.6.11-1
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.11-1 0
        500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     0.6.8.2-1 0
          1 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ stable/main amd64 Packages


Then clearly, liblcms-utils 1.19.dfsg2-1.5+b2 is only available locally
(no "500 http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64" line for
it) and 1.19.dfsg-1.2 isn't the candidate version either.
=> liblcms-utils won't receive any more updates (in the current config)
and should therefore be considered obsolete.

The package aptitude 0.6.11-1 however is not obsolete, the candidate
version is still available non-locally.



I think the problem is also, that obsoleteness is kinda defined for a
package only, while it should be defined for package+version
combination.


Cheers,
Chris.
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