[Aptitude-devel] Bug#174820: aptitude: I hit '+' on a virtual package, and nothing happens

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + pending - newcomer


2012-09-15 10:59 Daniel Hartwig:
>
>Dan Jacobson <jidanni at jidanni.org> wrote:
>> at least print an error message telling the user why.
>
>and later continues:
>> the same happens from the command line
>>
>> $ aptitude install virtualpackage
>>
>> will do nothing
>
>Something should be done in both cases.  Current apt-get behaviour is to
>install the sole providing package, if there is one, otherwise to
>display an error about the choice being ambiguous or not available.
>
>If there is a single provider we should install that.

This already happened in the command line for a few years, at least
since 2008 I think.  The last message ("Unable to apply some actions,
aborting") is from my (still unreleased) version, I think, but getting
there and this is not relevant for this report.

  # aptitude -s install a52dec
  Note: selecting "liba52-0.7.4-dev" instead of the virtual package "a52dec"
  The following NEW packages will be installed:
    liba52-0.7.4-dev
  0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 18 not upgraded.
  Need to get 0 B/51.0 kB of archives. After unpacking 156 kB will be used.
  Would download/install/remove packages.

  # aptitude -s install java-compiler
  "java-compiler" is a virtual package provided by:
    openjdk-9-jdk openjdk-6-jdk gcj-6-jdk openjdk-8-jdk openjdk-7-jdk gcj-jdk gcj-5-jdk gcj-4.9-jdk gcj-4.8-jdk
  You must choose one to install.
  Unable to apply some actions, aborting


I changed the behaviour in the curses interface to also behave like
this, so setting as +pending.


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