[Aptitude-devel] Bug#1110415: aptitude: "aptitude why" should tell when a package is manually installed

[Vincent Lefevre]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.8.13-7
Severity: wishlist

The output of "aptitude why" is sometimes confusing and useless.
For instance:

cventin% aptitude why ncal
i   quilt        Depends bsdextrautils | bsdmainutils
p   bsdmainutils Depends ncal

while as output, bsdmainutils is not installed, so that this cannot
be the reason why ncal is installed.

cventin% aptitude why emacs-calfw
i   emacs-calfw      Suggests emacs-calfw-howm
p   emacs-calfw-howm Depends  emacs-calfw (= 1.6+git20180118-2)

This is a circular dependendy, so this is useless.

The reason in both cases is that the package is manually installed,
and aptitude should output such information.

-- Package-specific info:
Terminal: xterm-256color
$DISPLAY is set.
which aptitude: /usr/bin/aptitude

aptitude version information:
aptitude 0.8.13
Compiler: g++ 14.2.0
Compiled against:
  apt version 7.0.0
  NCurses version 6.5
  libsigc++ version: 2.12.1
  Gtk+ support disabled.
  Qt support disabled.

Current library versions:
  NCurses version: ncurses 6.5.20250216
  cwidget version: 0.5.18
  Apt version: 7.0.0

aptitude linkage:
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007f34493c7000)
	libapt-pkg.so.7.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.7.0 (0x00007f3448a00000)
	libncursesw.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.6 (0x00007f3449364000)
	libtinfo.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.6 (0x00007f344932e000)
	libsigc-2.0.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsigc-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f3449325000)
	libcwidget.so.4 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcwidget.so.4 (0x00007f3448cf8000)
	libsqlite3.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so.0 (0x00007f3448880000)
	libboost_iostreams.so.1.83.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libboost_iostreams.so.1.83.0 (0x00007f344930a000)
	libxapian.so.30 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxapian.so.30 (0x00007f3448600000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f3448200000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f3448510000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f34492dd000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f344800a000)
	libz.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f34492bb000)
	libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x00007f34492a8000)
	liblzma.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 (0x00007f3449277000)
	liblz4.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/liblz4.so.1 (0x00007f3448cd1000)
	libzstd.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libzstd.so.1 (0x00007f3447f40000)
	libudev.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libudev.so.1 (0x00007f3448c8c000)
	libsystemd.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsystemd.so.0 (0x00007f3447e2b000)
	libcrypto.so.3 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcrypto.so.3 (0x00007f3447600000)
	libxxhash.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxxhash.so.0 (0x00007f3448c79000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f34493c9000)
	libuuid.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007f3448876000)
	libcap.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libcap.so.2 (0x00007f344886a000)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 13.0
  APT prefers unstable-debug
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable-debug'), (500, 'testing-security'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable-debug'), (500, 'proposed-updates-debug'), (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 6.12.38+deb13-amd64 (SMP w/12 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.8.13-7
ii  libapt-pkg7.0             3.0.3
ii  libboost-iostreams1.83.0  1.83.0-4.2
ii  libc6                     2.41-11
ii  libcwidget4               0.5.18-6+b2
ii  libgcc-s1                 14.2.0-19
ii  libncursesw6              6.5+20250216-2
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0v5         2.12.1-3
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.46.1-7
ii  libstdc++6                14.2.0-19
ii  libtinfo6                 6.5+20250216-2
ii  libxapian30               1.4.29-3

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  libdpkg-perl    1.22.21
ii  sensible-utils  0.0.25

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
pn  apt-xapian-index                <none>
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.8.13-7
pn  debtags                         <none>
ii  tasksel                         3.81

-- Configuration Files:
/etc/logrotate.d/aptitude changed [not included]

-- no debconf information

-- 
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 / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)