[Aptitude-devel] Bug#769222: Bug#769222: Bug#769222: Bug#769222: aptitude: Frequent pending actions left

[David Kalnischkies]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2015 at 01:06:24AM +0100, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> >I haven't really decided (mostly thanks to time issues) yet how to tackle
> >this giant ball of pain and on top of that how to sell it to the Release
> >Team if I would find a fix from the apt side. As said in the mentioned
> >bugreport, that wouldn't help in any way with wheezy-upgrades though.

[The bugreport was 769609 and the fix which landed in jessie with
Release team approval was a2a75ff4516f7609f4c55b42270abb8d08943c60.]


> In the dpkg commit fixing #766758, it says:
> 
>  This is a mostly conformant workaround for frontends like apt that do
>  not correctly call «dpkg --configure -a» or «dpkg --triggers-only -a»
>  after their normal runs, and leave packages in triggers-pending and
>  triggers-awaited states.

apt/jessie does call "dpkg --configure -a" by default after performing
its other dpkg callings. The workaround was needed as apt/wheezy is used
in the wheezy→jessie upgrade, while at some point in this upgrade
dpkg/jessie will be used; so dpkg has to behave as apt/wheezy expects it
to work.

[The "bleed through" of internal details like triggers is why we would
prefer that dpkg would deal with ordering all by itself as talked about
in the DebConf meeting]

> I am not sure if the front-ends are suppossed to be modified to call
> dpkg correctly because this "conformant workaround" will be removed, or
> what's the situation.  Can you please clarify, if you know the reply
> right away?  If you have to dig no problem, I will do it.

I am pretty sure the workaround will be removed at some point, so if
aptitude calls dpkg itself in any way, it should call --configure -a at
the end of these actions – "--configure pkg" might be the most likely
situation to activate a trigger but any file placement or maintainer
script can call one.

I don't know if aptitude actually calls dpkg on its own, but some
reports I had read suggested as much even through I wouldn't expect it…
So I left this bug here for someone to check aptitude – feel free to
close if there is no such issue.


Best regards

David Kalnischkies
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