[Aptitude-devel] Bug#915385: aptitude: manually installed flag set in the UI not preserved

[Vincent Lefevre]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.8.11-6
Severity: normal

Package pdftk has been replaced by pdftk-java. Thus in the upgrade
from the aptitude curses UI, pdftk was selected as upgraded and
pdftk-java was selected as newly installed (as a dependency of
pdftk). Since I did not want to keep the transitional dummy package
pdftk, I marked pdftk-java as manually installed by typing 'm'
(thus the 'A' disappeared as expected) and marked pdftk to be
purged by typing '_'. Then I did the upgrade with 'gg'.

But after quitting aptitude, "apt install -f" said:

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libcommons-lang3-java pdftk-java
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.

and when I ran aptitude again, aptitude proposed to remove pdftk-java.

-- Package-specific info:
Terminal: xterm-debian
$DISPLAY is set.
which aptitude: /usr/bin/aptitude

aptitude version information:
aptitude 0.8.11
Compiler: g++ 8.2.0
Compiled against:
  apt version 5.0.2
  NCurses version 6.1
  libsigc++ version: 2.10.1
  Gtk+ support disabled.
  Qt support disabled.

Current library versions:
  NCurses version: ncurses 6.1.20181013
  cwidget version: 0.5.17
  Apt version: 5.0.2

aptitude linkage:
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fff11375000)
	libapt-pkg.so.5.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.5.0 (0x00007fae1cdf4000)
	libncursesw.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.6 (0x00007fae1cdba000)
	libtinfo.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 (0x00007fae1cd8c000)
	libsigc-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsigc-2.0.so.0 (0x00007fae1cd83000)
	libcwidget.so.3 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcwidget.so.3 (0x00007fae1cc7d000)
	libsqlite3.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so.0 (0x00007fae1cb5c000)
	libboost_iostreams.so.1.67.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_iostreams.so.1.67.0 (0x00007fae1cb3c000)
	libboost_system.so.1.67.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_system.so.1.67.0 (0x00007fae1cb35000)
	libxapian.so.30 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxapian.so.30 (0x00007fae1c90a000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fae1c8e9000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fae1c766000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007fae1c5e3000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fae1c5c7000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007fae1c406000)
	libresolv.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv.so.2 (0x00007fae1c3ec000)
	libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007fae1c1ce000)
	libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x00007fae1c1bb000)
	liblzma.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 (0x00007fae1bf95000)
	liblz4.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblz4.so.1 (0x00007fae1bd76000)
	libzstd.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libzstd.so.1 (0x00007fae1bcdb000)
	libudev.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 (0x00007fae1bcbb000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fae1d427000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fae1bcb6000)
	librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007fae1bcac000)
	libuuid.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007fae1bca1000)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.18.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=POSIX, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=POSIX (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.8.11-6
ii  libapt-pkg5.0             1.8.0~alpha2
ii  libboost-iostreams1.67.0  1.67.0-11
ii  libboost-system1.67.0     1.67.0-11
ii  libc6                     2.28-1
ii  libcwidget3v5             0.5.17-11
ii  libgcc1                   1:8.2.0-10
ii  libncursesw6              6.1+20181013-1
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0v5         2.10.1-1
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.26.0-1
ii  libstdc++6                8.2.0-10
ii  libtinfo6                 6.1+20181013-1
ii  libxapian30               1.4.9-1

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl  1.2.0-13
ii  sensible-utils                 0.0.12

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
pn  apt-xapian-index                <none>
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.8.11-6
pn  debtags                         <none>
ii  tasksel                         3.48

-- no debconf information