[Aptitude-devel] Bug#771605: aptitude: Does not resolve file conflicts

Sun Nov 30 23:13:17 UTC 2014

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.8.2-1ubuntu4
Severity: important

When upgrading, if a file moved from package to package, conflicts often
occur. This can be resolved by installing packages in a particular
order, which Aptitude should do automatically but doesn’t.

For example, suppose first-package=1.0 and second-package=1.0 are
installed, with a certain file belonging to the first one. But for v2.0 of
the packages, the file is in the second package instead. Upgrading the
packages is only possible starting with the one with the file, so the
file is temporarily removed from the system altogether, then
second-package=2.0 kicks in and reinstates the file. If Aptitude happens
to start with the wrong one, dpkg will fail and the entire upgrade will
fail, leaving the user to resolve it manually.

This happens with KDE packages, at least in Ubuntu, all the time. For the
average user, the problem is hard to diagnose and fix, and causes
a failure of the entire upgrade, possibly leaving the system in an
inconsistent state.

The problem boils down to particular versions of particular packages
having conflicts that are not immediately visible to Aptitude. Is it
possible for Aptitude, upon encountering such an error from dpkg, to
mark down the conflict and re-run the resolution algorithm? Or possibly
look through the lists of files while resolving dependencies if that’s
not too resource-intensive?

While an argument can be made that the fault lies with the repository
that has conflicting packages not marked as such, this is still a
hard-to-resolve issue that Aptitude is in position to prevent,
therefore I suggest it should do so.

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

aptitude version information:
aptitude 0.6.8.2 compiled at Feb 17 2014 23:57:51
Compiler: g++ 4.8.2
Compiled against:
  apt version 4.12.0
  NCurses version 5.9
  libsigc++ version: 2.2.10
  Ept support enabled.
  Gtk+ support disabled.
  Qt support disabled.

Current library versions:
  NCurses version: ncurses 5.9.20140712
  cwidget version: 0.5.16
  Apt version: 4.12.0

aptitude linkage:
	linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xb77a5000)
	libapt-pkg.so.4.12 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.4.12 (0xb71e1000)
	libncursesw.so.5 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.5 (0xb71a6000)
	libtinfo.so.5 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.5 (0xb7182000)
	libsigc-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libsigc-2.0.so.0 (0xb717c000)
	libcwidget.so.3 => /usr/lib/libcwidget.so.3 (0xb7079000)
	libept.so.1.aptpkg4.12 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libept.so.1.aptpkg4.12 (0xb7022000)
	libxapian.so.22 => /usr/lib/sse2/libxapian.so.22 (0xb6e28000)
	libsqlite3.so.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so.0 (0xb6d51000)
	libboost_iostreams.so.1.54.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libboost_iostreams.so.1.54.0 (0xb6d39000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0xb6d1c000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb6c27000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0xb6be1000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb6bc2000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb6a14000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0xb6a0f000)
	libz.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0xb69f5000)
	libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0xb69e2000)
	liblzma.so.5 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 (0xb69bb000)
	libuuid.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0xb69b5000)
	/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb77a6000)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers utopic-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'utopic-updates'), (500, 'utopic-security'), (500, 'utopic')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.13.0-36-generic (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.6.8.2-1ubuntu4
ii  libapt-pkg4.12            1.0.9.2ubuntu2
ii  libboost-iostreams1.54.0  1.54.0-4ubuntu3.1
ii  libc6                     2.19-10ubuntu2
ii  libcwidget3               0.5.16-3.5ubuntu1
ii  libept1.4.12              1.0.12
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.9.1-16ubuntu6
ii  libncursesw5              5.9+20140712-2ubuntu1
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.2.10-0.2ubuntu2
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.8.6-1
ii  libstdc++6                4.9.1-16ubuntu6
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9+20140712-2ubuntu1
ii  libxapian22               1.2.18-1ubuntu1

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  apt-xapian-index               0.45ubuntu4
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-1.1
ii  sensible-utils                 0.0.9

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
pn  aptitude-doc-en | aptitude-doc  <none>
ii  debtags                         1.12ubuntu2
ii  tasksel                         2.88ubuntu15

-- no debconf information