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

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2025-08-05 08:42:38 +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote:
> That's a bit separate from aptitude why's goal. aptitude why doesn't
> tell you why a package is installed, but the strongest reason why an
> installed package could lead to the package being installed.

But I don't see how this makes sense in the case

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

Here, it is bsdextrautils that is installed; bsdmainutils is not
installed. So the dependency on ncal does not have to be satisfied.
And the strongest reason why ncal is installed is that it is
actually manually installed.

Note that "aptitude why" says whenever a package in the chain is
manually installed, *except* for the target package. Information
on whether the target package is automatically installed / manually
installed or not installed would be useful.

For instance:

cventin% aptitude why dracut-install
i   initramfs-tools      Depends initramfs-tools-core (= 0.148.3)
i A initramfs-tools-core Depends dracut-install                  

Here one knows that initramfs-tools is manually installed and that
initramfs-tools-core is automatically installed (because of the "A"),
but there is no such information for dracut-install. A third line
could have been useful, such as

i   initramfs-tools      Depends initramfs-tools-core (= 0.148.3)
i A initramfs-tools-core Depends dracut-install                  
i A dracut-install

I also get

cventin% aptitude why bsdmainutils  
i   quilt Depends bsdextrautils | bsdmainutils

while here bsdmainutils is not installed. This is misleading:
if I remove quilt, then installed it again, it will not install
bsdmainutils, because bsdextrautils comes first.

So, what's the purpose of "aptitude why" in such a case?

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent at vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/>
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Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)