[Aptitude-devel] Bug#729526: Bug#729526: ssh.deb: somewhat misleading description

[David Kalnischkies]

On Sat, Apr 01, 2017 at 07:37:54PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > The way to handle such cases in the APT world is the setting
> > APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections which controls if dependencies get the
> > markauto flag when a packages pulls in new dependencies.
> 
> We're not actually disagreeing above.  I think Never-MarkAuto-Sections
> just didn't exist when I wrote the above in 2013, and does basically what
> I was suggesting.

It exists since 2007 acording to apt 0.7.5 changelog.

It did change behaviour slightly in 2015 through as a package no longer
get its bits flipped while a new dependency is pulled in, but at the
time the package in such a section is removed (implicitly, if the
metapackage is removed explicitly apt does change nothing).

Doesn't effects aptitude as it has its own solver and this is embedded
in the internal apt solver ATM. In case that isn't reimplemented in
aptitude already, it might be a better idea to talk about this again at
the start of buster as I want to move this out of the solver for a while
now as we need that for the external solvers as well.  It is just
a matter of "how" API wise which probably will result in a bunch of code
changes as well… so it is always "later".

As a first step it might be interesting to figure out how the API would
need to look for aptitude to be able to use it (or in which calls we can
hide it to have no API for it at all as that is what we need to do for
compat reasons for all other frontends).


> However, an even better solution is to move the manually installed bit to
> the new package when a transitional package adds a dependency on it, which
> I believe is the effect of APT::Move-Autobit-Sections.  I think this bug
> can now be closed since APT::Move-Autobit-Sections has been implemented.

Implemented in 2015, also not in effect for aptitude if not explicitly
duplicated there. Same "solution" as above.

The move happens on the upgrade of the transitional package changing
from whatever-section to a move-section (aka "oldlibs") btw. Not
unconditionally all the time.


Best regards

David Kalnischkies
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