[Aptitude-devel] Bug#836708: aptitude: refuses to upgrade packages, 'g' says "Actions: no changes"

[Vincent Lefevre]

Control: reopen -1

Hi,

On 2017-03-06 22:57:18 +0100, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> 2016-09-05 02:33 Vincent Lefevre:
> > On 2016-09-05 01:50:04 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > In the UI, I've selected various packages for upgrade; I can see
> > > no breakages. But the 'g' key doesn't have any effect, it just
> > > says: "[1(1)/...] Actions: no changes" with no explanations.
> > 
> > And 'e' (Examine) just says:
> > 
> >  --\ Leave the following recommendations unresolved:
> >    libmtp9 recommends libmtp-runtime
> > 
> > libmtp9 recommends libmtp-runtime
> > --\ The following actions will resolve this dependency:
> >  -> Cancel the removal of libmtp-runtime
> >  -> Downgrade libmtp-runtime [1.1.12-1 (now, testing, unstable) -> 1.1.8-1+b1 (
> >  -> Leave the dependency "libmtp9 recommends libmtp-runtime" unresolved.
> > 
> > which makes no sense since nothing related to libmtp is proposed.
> 
> This was implemented after your complaint in #819636 (not upgrading
> "lightly" if it means breaking a recommend relationship), which then
> needed #822329 to not be so eager on fixing unfulfilled recommends.

Except that libmtp-runtime was already installed, so that the
dependency was satisfied! And I didn't request it to be removed.
So, the above message is simply buggy.

In any case, "Actions: no changes" is not a meaningful error message and
isn't even documented anywhere (neither in the man page, nor in the manual).
So, the fact that this message appears is a bug.

Regards,

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)