Bug#1131109: steam-installer: package not installable on trixie

[Simon McVittie]

Control: tags -1 + trixie moreinfo unreproducible
Control: severity -1 important

On Tue, 17 Mar 2026 at 18:30:17 +0100, Michał Trojnara wrote:
>steam-installer is uninstallable, even though its dependency is installed.

I can't reproduce this. This succeeded, using podman to run in a trixie 
container:

$ podman run --rm -it debian:trixie
# dpkg --add-architecture i386
# sed -i -e 's/Components: main$/& contrib/' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources
# apt update
# apt full-upgrade
# apt install steam-installer

and so did this:

$ podman run --rm -it debian:trixie
# dpkg --add-architecture i386
# sed -i -e 's/Components: main$/& contrib/' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources
# apt update
# apt full-upgrade
# apt install steam-libs-i386
# apt install steam-installer

(I also have full trixie systems with this package installed and they 
seem fine.)

># apt install steam-installer
>Solving dependencies... Error!
>Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
>requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
>distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
>or been moved out of Incoming.
>The following information may help to resolve the situation:
>
>Unsatisfied dependencies:
> steam-installer : Depends: steam-libs-i386 (= 1:1.0.0.83~ds-3) but it is not installable
>Error: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
>Error: The following information from --solver 3.0 may provide additional context:
>   Unable to satisfy dependencies. Reached two conflicting decisions:
>   1. steam-installer:amd64=1:1.0.0.83~ds-3 is selected for install
>   2. steam-installer:amd64 Depends steam-libs-i386 (= 1:1.0.0.83~ds-3)
>      but none of the choices are installable:
>      [no choices]
>
># dpkg -l steam-libs-i386
>Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
>| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
>|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
>||/ Name                 Version         Architecture Description
>+++-====================-===============-============-=========================================
>ii  steam-libs-i386:i386 1:1.0.0.83~ds-3 i386         Metapackage for 32-bit Steam dependencies

I don't know how this could happen. Perhaps the apt maintainers have an 
idea?

>I guess maybe apt no longer allows for dependencies in other architectures.

apt does allow cross-architecture dependencies on Multi-Arch: foreign 
packages, like steam-libs-i386. If it didn't, cross-compiling would be 
impossible.

     smcv