[Aptitude-devel] Bug#802532: aptitude: Missing comparison operators in "Unable to satisfy the build-depends" error message

[Axel Beckert]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.7.4-1

Hi,

While checking why gnudatalanguage has "BD-Uninstallable" on most
architectures, I tried to install all build-dependencies locally.

First I checked what's missing in the extracted source package:

$ dpkg-checkbuilddeps
dpkg-checkbuilddeps: error: Unmet build dependencies: chrpath libeigen3-dev libgsl0-dev libgraphicsmagick++1-dev libplplot-dev (>= 5.10.0+dfsg-1~) | libplplot-dev (<= 5.10)

Looked reasonable.

Then I tried to install those packages as follows:

# aptitude build-dep gnudatalanguage
Unable to satisfy the build-depends: Build-Depends: libncurses-dev.
Unable to satisfy the build-depends: Build-Depends: libplplot-dev ( 5.10.0+dfsg-1~) | libplplot-dev ( 5.10).
Unable to satisfy the build-depends: Build-Depends: libncurses-dev.
Unable to satisfy the build-depends: Build-Depends: libplplot-dev ( 5.10.0+dfsg-1~) | libplplot-dev ( 5.10).
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  chrpath libeigen3-dev libgraphicsmagick++1-dev libgraphicsmagick1-dev{a} libgsl0-dev 
0 packages upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 3,185 kB of archives. After unpacking 20.2 MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] 

Please note the missing ">=" and "<=" in the error messages (compared to
the dpkg-checkbuilddeps output) while the space behind them is there.

Also the trailing dot at the end of all these error messages looks wrong
-- but is probably not a technical issue, just a question of grammar.

The following are the full build-dependencies from apt-cache showsrc
gnudatalanguage on the same machine:

Build-Depends: chrpath, cmake, debhelper (>= 9~), dpkg-dev (>= 1.16.1~), libantlr-dev, libeigen3-dev, libfftw3-dev, libgrib-api-dev, libgsl0-dev, libhdf4-alt-dev, libhdf5-dev | libhdf5-serial-dev, libgraphicsmagick++1-dev, libncurses-dev, libnetcdf-dev, libplplot-dev (>= 5.10.0+dfsg-1~) | libplplot-dev (<= 5.10), libreadline-dev, libudunits2-dev, libwxgtk3.0-dev, pslib-dev, python-all-dev, python-numpy, xauth, xvfb, zlib1g-dev

libncurses-dev is btw. a virtual package while libplplot-dev isn't.

So the reason for the error message about libncurses-dev is
https://bugs.debian.org/509100 (aptitude: build-dep fails when a
virtual package is needed), but the fact that there is even an error
message for libplplot-dev is maybe related to the fact that the
comparison operator is not shown.

JFTR what apt-get would do (afterwards):

# apt-get build-dep gnudatalanguage
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libcsiro0 libplplot-c++11 libplplot-dev libplplot-fortran10 libplplot12 libqhull-dev libqsastime-dev libqsastime0
  plplot12-driver-qt plplot12-driver-wxwidgets
0 upgraded, 10 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,265 kB of archives.
After this operation, 6,236 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] 

-- Package-specific info:
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-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (990, 'unstable'), (600, 'testing'), (500, 'buildd-unstable'), (400, 'stable'), (110, 'experimental'), (1, 'buildd-experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.2.0-trunk-amd64 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: sysvinit (via /sbin/init)

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.7.4-1
ii  libapt-pkg4.16            1.0.10.2
ii  libboost-iostreams1.58.0  1.58.0+dfsg-3.1
ii  libc6                     2.19-22
ii  libcwidget3v5             0.5.17-4
ii  libgcc1                   1:5.2.1-22
ii  libncursesw5              6.0+20150810-1
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0v5         2.6.1-2
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.8.11.1-1
ii  libstdc++6                5.2.1-22
ii  libtinfo5                 6.0+20150810-1
ii  libxapian22v5             1.2.21-1.2

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.7.4-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   1.2.0-8
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.9

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
pn  apt-xapian-index  <none>
pn  debtags           <none>
ii  tasksel           3.33

-- no debconf information