[Aptitude-devel] Bug#540978: aptitude: Aptitude makes the wrong choice when resolving conflict with alternative package

[Josh Triplett]

On Wed, Dec 09, 2015 at 03:50:34PM +0000, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> Control: tags -1 + moreinfo
> 
> 
> Hi Josh,
> 
> 2009-08-11 04:02 Josh Triplett:
> >Package: aptitude
> >Version: 0.4.11.11-1+b2
> >Severity: normal
> >
> >I have a metapackage josh-gui, which among other things depends on
> >totem-xine and conflicts with totem-gstreamer.  Various packages depend
> >on totem-gstreamer | totem-xine, such as gnome-desktop-environment and
> >totem-plugins.  Whenever a new version of totem comes out, and I attempt
> >to upgrade to it (usually by hitting + on the "video" section including
> >totem-common, totem-xine, and totem-plugins), aptitude gets confused: it
> >attempts to pull in totem-gstreamer (despite not needing it to satisfy
> >any dependencies, with totem-xine already installed), and it then
> >correctly concludes that it has broken josh-gui.  Furthermore, to fix
> >this brokenness, it initially proposes removing josh-gui; its *second*
> >solution does the right thing by choosing *not* to install
> >totem-gstreamer in the first place.
> 
> Have you seen this behaviour recently, with this package of yours or
> others?
> 
> The resolution system changed a lot in the years after this bug report,
> specially with 0.6.  I could attempt to reproduce a similar case with
> other packages (totem-xine and -gstreamer are not in unstable now), but
> if you continue to have a similar set-up it would be quicker / more
> reliable to confirm if the behaviour it's still happening as you saw it
> in the past.

I still see dependency resolution issues arise fairly often, where
aptitude wants to remove half the world rather than making what seems
like a more obvious choice.  This specific situation went away when
totem-xine did, though.

Probably better to report new issues for new dependency resolution
problems that apply to current Debian, rather than attempting to
repurpose this six-year-old bug.

- Josh Triplett