Bug#428379: update-manager: Install dependencies of packages that it doesn't upgrade

[Thibaut Paumard]

Hi,

I'm going through the RC bugs of update-manager and update-notifier.

You reported one bug last year that looks very hard to reproduce,  
because it looks like a very unusual situation. Given this fact, I'm  
wondering whether the severity should be downgraded to normal. I'm  
also wondering how we could make up a new showcase for this bug.

Furthermore I'm not sur what you mean here:
> Depite of this, update-manager happily proposed me to install  
> "bochbios, vgabios,
> proll and openhackware" which are new dependencies of qemu and  
> which aren't needed
> if you don't upgrade qemu (which is not really doable anyway). Of  
> course those
> packages are currently NOT installed.


Let's review the versions available at that time:

> $ LANG=C apt-cache policy qemu
> qemu:
>   Installed: 0.9.0-1~db1
>   Candidate: 0.9.0-2
>   Version table:
>      0.9.0-2 0
>         500 http://ftp.fr.debian.org sid/main Packages
>  *** 0.9.0-1~db1 0
>         100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
>      0.8.2-4etch1 0
>         990 http://security.debian.org etch/updates/main Packages
>         990 http://ftp.fr.debian.org etch-proposed-updates/main  
> Packages
>      0.8.2-4 0
>         990 http://ftp.fr.debian.org etch/main Packages


I checked here:
http://packages.debian.org/etch/qemu
and indeed the etch version 0.8.2-4etch1 did already depend on the 4  
packages you mention. From the changelog, these dependencies do not  
seem to have been added between 0.8.2-4 and 0.8.2-4etch1.

Are you absolutely sure your custom version 0.9.0-1~db1 did not have  
these dependencies as well?

In your last e-mail you state:
> To reproduce it, you need to run etch, mark etch as preferred
> distribution, add unstable to sources.list and pin qemu to mark the  
> sid
> version as preferred (pin-priority > 990).


I believe that is not true. You need to pin qemu to a version above  
the current stable, below sid, and which does not have the same  
dependencies as in sid. Do you agree? (Still trying to make a new  
showcase for the bug).

Regards, Thibaut.