[Aptitude-devel] Bug#819636: aptitude: wants to remove a recommended package

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

More info about this.  In my system, with unstable and the old libecm0
and gmp-ecm installed by hand (so they are "obsolete"):

# apt-get -s install gmp-ecm
...
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libecm1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libecm1
The following packages will be upgraded:
  gmp-ecm
1 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 145 not upgraded.
Inst libecm1 (7.0+ds-1 Debian:unstable [amd64])
Inst gmp-ecm [6.4.4-2] (7.0+ds-1 Debian:unstable [amd64])
Conf libecm1 (7.0+ds-1 Debian:unstable [amd64])
Conf gmp-ecm (7.0+ds-1 Debian:unstable [amd64])

# apt-get -s upgrade
...
The following packages have been kept back:
  gmp-ecm libecm0

# apt-get -s dist-upgrade
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libecm1
The following packages have been kept back:
  libecm0
The following packages will be upgraded:
  [...] gmp-ecm [...]


So it seems that a direct request to install (upgrade) a package is
always granted, even if libecm0 is left behind with unfulfilled
recommends.  Maybe it's because of being obsolete packages, unlike in
the system where this originally happened.


Cheers.
-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>