[Piuparts-devel] How to force apt-get to not remove a certain (broken) package on apt-get install --yes --fix-broken

[David Kalnischkies]

On Sat, Feb 08, 2014 at 04:13:36PM +0100, Andreas Beckmann wrote:
> Is there a solution to force apt-get to keep this package installed and
> fix up the system at all cost and rather fail if the dependencies cannot
> be satisfied?

I would assume apt is only removing the dummy if it is impossible to fix
up the system otherwise e.g. because of unavailable dependencies
(if not please report a bug).

In so far you could just check if the dummy is still installed and if
not bail out. I think that is what sbuild did before switching to a
dummy archive instead. Not really nice, but the alternative…


Designing an interface to allow it to tell apt which package should not
be removed in such broken cases feels like too much work for little
gain (as the obvious points are already taken). It is probably better to
work on removing the need for dummy packages completely.

After all, "apt-get install ./foo.deb" and
"apt-get build-dep ./debian/control" would be good interfaces for this.
Requires quiet a bit of plumbing though to get it right, but that was
the case for multiarch, too, and somehow it worked out in the end.


Best regards

David Kalnischkies
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