[Aptitude-devel] Bug#823928: aptitude wants to remove manually installed packages with SolutionCost "safety, removals"

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2016-05-18 12:11:18 +0100, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
> >  For each package proposed for upgrade:
> >  1. Type '+'.
> >  2. If there is any removal, cancel.
> >  3. Otherwise, choose to upgrade.
> 
> Only that to upgrade, sometimes, packages left behind (e.g. in
> transitions) have to be removed in order for the whole system to be
> upgraded.  Otherwise the packages can get hold back indefinitely due to
> old/local packages, and peculiarities of how Debian works.

This remark is pointless, because:

1. I can handle that with apt. Ideally, with SolutionCost "safety,
removals", aptitude would propose to hold back the concerned packages
as the first solution, and propose removals as the second solution.

2. As already shown in another bug (about the gmp-ecm transition),
aptitude does not always offer the choice to remove some manually
installed packages, while apt has no problems here.

> People certainly don't want to hold back indefinetely the upgrade of 150
> components of KDE just because an obsolete package is not removed.

I disagree. If a user still uses this "obsolete" package, he should
have a way to block the upgrade of the components, e.g. until this
package is updated or replaced by something else in the future.

> And even if they really don't want to upgrade KDE in that occasion,
> aptitude should not fail to offer the (apparently) most sensible
> solution in that case.

What is the most sensible solution should be the choice of the user.

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