Bug#492863: update-notifier: the tray icon keeps finding updates even when the system is up to date version graph

[Sam Morris]

clone 492863 -1
retitle -1 update-manager: does not install packages that 'apt-get dist-upgrade' would install
reassign -1 update-manager
block by -1
thanks

On Sun, 2008-08-03 at 23:58 +0100, Sam Morris wrote:
> Looks like the culprit is the python script that update-notifier
> launches to discover if there are updates available:
> 
>         $ /usr/lib/update-notifier/apt-check -p
>         Reading package lists... Done
>         Building dependency tree       
>         Reading state information... Done
>         xscreensaver
>         bse-alsa
>         xli
> 
> Looking further, it seems that depcache.MarkedInstall returns true for
> these packages. But I have never asked anything to install them, and I
> don't know where apt would even keep track of this information.

So, if I run 'apt-get dist-upgrade', these packages get newly installed.
So this is not a bug in update-notifier.

It is actually a bug in update-manager (which is launched by
update-notifier when the user selects 'install updates'). Thus I'm
cloning the bug, and leaving the original blocked by the clone (so that
others reporting this bug in update-notifier will see this message).

Why do we have apt-get, aptitude, synaptic, update-notifier,
update-manager and others, all implementing their own dependency
tracking, pinning, recommends-handling and logic for picking which
packages to install, anyway?

-- 
Sam Morris
http://robots.org.uk/

PGP key id 1024D/5EA01078
3412 EA18 1277 354B 991B  C869 B219 7FDB 5EA0 1078
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