[Aptitude-devel] Bug#219882: aptitude: Mark broken package as "installable".

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + wontfix
Control: close -1


Hi,

2003-11-09 23:16 Brian May:
>Package: aptitude
>Version: 0.2.13-2
>Severity: wishlist
>
>Hello,
>
>This might seem weird, but consider to situations:
>
>1. I want to install kde from unstable, but some of the dependancies
>cannot be fixed (sidenote: maybe that has been fixed now, I am assuming
>it hasn't). I would like to mark kde as "installable" all the same,
>which would mean install all possible dependancies, and when kde is
>not broken automatically install it.
>
>This would save having to manaul select each dependancy, and try to
>work out why each one is broken. Last time I checked, kdc wouldn't
>install because kde-core wouldn't install because ... and required
>manual dependancies several levels deep.
>
>It would also allow this dependancy packages to be properly
>marked as automatic.
>
>
>2. gnome appears to be broken. Putting it on hold doesn't seem to help.
>The only option aptitude says it has is to remove it. As such, it
>also wants to remove 132Meg of automatically installed gnome packages.
>
>It would be much better if I could somehow mark gnome as "installable",
>so aptitude only has to remove the gnome packages, and not all the
>automatic packages it pulled in.
>
>This is on powerpc, but I suspect I recently had the same problem
>with i386 (I haven't double checked why it removed lots of files
>I wanted to keep yet though).


2003-11-10 18:20 Daniel Burrows:
>  aptitude doesn't handle metapackages (particularly when they have
>problems) particularly gracefully.  Maybe having the user mark them
>explicitly would help, as you suggest.

Despite Daniel agreeing to this at the time, the development during the
following years (if not already from before) made this impossible.

aptitude is based on the idea that you cannot get a broken system, it
will insist to fix it automatically before proceeding with any action,
much more than apt.

Hopefully, the resolver can be used to deal with situations like these
more easily, and get to the system to a usable state even if keeping
back many packages.

So I am closing this bug now, it doesn't make sense to keep it open
indefinitely if this is not going to be implemented.


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