[Aptitude-devel] Bug#877716: qalculate: Removing qalculate removes qalculate-gtk

[David Kalnischkies]

On Thu, Dec 14, 2017 at 12:58:10AM +0100, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> If I am not misremembering, I have seen similar discussions every now
> and then on debian-devel@, so for me it's an open question, and I don't
> like the package managers to try to be too clever in those cases -- at

That is actually where this special handling stems from: oldlibs used to
be handled like metapackages which used to be handled in a "all
dependencies are marked manual" way. That changed a while ago: The
dependencies of a metapackage are marked manual on remove of said
metapackage – but only if the remove is due to unsatisfied dependencies,
not if the metapackage itself is the package asked to be removed.


> So for me, that aptitude already informs about removing both packages
> and asks for confirmation, is completely acceptable behaviour.

Yes and that is completely fine. aptitude with its interactivity gives
very fine control over such things, something apt (or e.g. a gui
software center on top of apt) doesn't. It/they kinda have to guess what
the user meant as we can't really ask – nor can really expect a "normal"
user (whoever that is) to have a good opinion on it.

So apt takes the stanza of: The user will know exactly which packages
(s)he wants to have installed/removed (= named explicitly on the
commandline), but all the details like version, dependencies and stuff
are left for apt to pick sensible things for (+ extreme backward-
compatibility – lets remember that the autobit itself is a backport from
aptitude and hence subject to compat-worries – and debian policy and you
have it).

aptitude expects more choices to be made by the user – and if only by
accepting the default actions it picked – with the assumption that the
user will know what is sensible [for him/her] and pick that instead if
(s)he wants.


> > > So, at least from an apt PoV (and like aptitude as well) this
> > > works as intended although I see what you mean and agree that it
> > > is a bit sad that you have to explicitly tell your package manager
> > > that you want to keep qalculate-gtk after you figured out that you
> > > have needlessly installed qalculate,
> 
> For me it's the other way around, I would wonder why it wants to keep
> qalculate-gtk installed when the only rdep is being removed -- for me,
> that qalculate is now in "oldlibs" is probably an irrelevant detail in
> most actual cases when I want something removed...

We were imagining a user installing qalculate here (which installs
qalculate-gtk) later reading the description telling the user that
(s)he can just easily and safely remove the package… but that marks
qalculate-gtk for removal, something the user didn't want to happen as
(s)he was just following "orders" (or in apts upgrade scenario not
remove the package making the user not-unhappy¹ as it works as (s)he was
told)


¹ as we all know: users are never happy. They are just sometimes briefly
in the state of not wanting to report a bug, which makes some of them
unhappy…


> But then again, that's why we have different package managers, isn't it?

We have different package managers because you haven't been enlighted
yet. One day you will see supercow as the superior easteregg overlord it
is over this petty elephant-eating snake, but until then you are
destined to pass your time playing minesweeper^W^Wmaintaining this
heretical wannabe package manager… may the cow have mercy with your
soul. (SCNR)

On a more serious note, I think I already outlined that further above,
but in short: Different user expectations both from the side of the user
and of the program. Thankfully a user can switch between all of them
rather easily – much simpler than changing text editors^W^Wdesktop
environments…


Best regards

David Kalnischkies
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