[Pkg-javascript-devel] Bug#1002035: nodejs: sse2-support failure leaves dependencies in apt that cannot be met

[J. William Campbell]

Package: nodejs
Version: 12.22.5~dfsg-2~11u1
Severity: important
X-Debbugs-Cc: jwilliamcampbell at comcast.net

Dear Maintainer,

I attempted to install package nodejs on an Intel processor that does not
support sse2 instructions. The library dependencies for nodejs require
the sse2 support. It is unclear to me why nodejs itself would require
such support, but in any case installing nodejs requires package
sse2-support, which will always fail to install on older CPUs. This in
itself, while disappointing, isn't a problem. However, this failure occurs
fairly deep in the installation of packages. The result a package with
dependencies that cannot be statisfied. --fix-broken is of course unable to
do so, because sse2-support will never install.

I now have a broken apt configuration that I have been unable to fix. I
cannot remove/purge nodejs because of the unmet dependencies and I
cannot meet them because the required package will not ever install.

This is a serious annoyance. The package sse2-support is present only to
cause the install of the package to fail. It provides no code. A possible
fix would be to allow the user to force sse2-support to install in order to
satisfy the dependencies so that the package nodejs will not be broken.
The user can then remove nodejs or go ahead with the understanding that if
sse2 instructions in the library are actually used a fault will occur. The
documentation does not warn that nodejs requires sse2-support, but even
if it did it is probable this fact would be unclear to many users.

What I expected is that nodejs would install without problems, and that
if it did not it would not leave the package management on my Debian
system basically inoperative. That is where I am now, and I have been unable
to find a solution.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.1
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-9-686 (SMP w/1 CPU thread)
Locale: LANG=C, 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 nodejs depends on:
ii  libc6      2.31-13+deb11u2
iu  libnode72  12.22.5~dfsg-2~11u1

Versions of packages nodejs recommends:
ii  ca-certificates  20210119
ii  nodejs-doc       12.22.5~dfsg-2~11u1

Versions of packages nodejs suggests:
pn  npm  <none>

-- no debconf information