Package: aptitude Version: 0.2.15.8-1 Severity: important
Note: the problem in question was noted on a different system, though IRC discussion in #debian and #debian-devel indicates others are seeing this issue with various versions of aptitude. Version numbers will differ slightly, should be whatever's current in Sarge as of two days ago. In a recent (3 day old) netinst of Sarge, a number of packages were installed via an interactive (full-screen) aptitude session. After completion of this install and exiting the session, several additional packages were specified for install in command-line mode: aptitude install <package list> Aptitude proceeded to list approximately 100 packages for removal. The action was canceled, the removed packages listed to a file, and a revised install command issued including the file contents: aptitude install <package list> $( cat file ) ...which proceeded successfully. There wasn't time to investigate _why_ the packages were marked for removal, however _none_ of these packages generated any conflicts when requested in conjunction with the packages initially requested in the command-line install. Problem: aptitude should produce consistent results when used from command-line and interactively. There are several existing issues with aptitude not respecting packagelists supplied via dpkg and dselect as well. I have grave concerns that aptitude itself being sufficiently usable for inclusion in a stable Debian release. I say this as a fan of aptitude. Workarounds: It's relatively easy to resolve the problem as I did, by passing the list of removed packages on the "install" command. However this requires the user be aware of the problem up front. Recovery from large-scale package removal may be difficult or time-consuming, particularly on dialup or standalone systems in which package cache has expired. The aptitude manpage should have a BUGS section listing this discrepency between interactive and commandline usage, and suggested workarounds (as above). Ideally, the problem should be fixed by having aptitude use consistent package-registration and dependency resolution routines in all modes. aptitude should also play nice with other packaging tools, including apt-get, dpkg, and dselect. -- System Information: Debian Release: 3.1 APT prefers testing APT policy: (950, 'testing') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.7-1-686 Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1) Versions of packages aptitude depends on: ii apt [libapt-pkg-libc6.3-5-3 0.5.28.1 Advanced front-end for dpkg ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-20 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an ii libgcc1 1:3.4.3-6 GCC support library ii libncurses5 5.4-4 Shared libraries for terminal hand ii libsigc++-1.2-5c102 1.2.5-1 Type-safe Signal Framework for C++ ii libstdc++5 1:3.3.5-8 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 -- no debconf information -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
