[Bug 831768] Re: aptitude cannot handle conflicts with multiarch enabled

[Bouke Bunnik]

Maybe I misunderstand the meaning of the "importance" bit. I thought it
was importance to the functioning of this package, so that availability
of other package managers is irrelevant to its setting.

While changing the bug's importance doesn't change anyone's priorities
in fixing aptitude, it does accurately reflect the status of this bug
for the usage of aptitude in current ubuntu: for those using multiarch,
it makes aptitude just about useless, if not worse (when silly enough to
listen to its' recomendations of what to change/delete).

I personally decided to remove it until this is fixed, despite having
used it in preference to apt-get etc. for several years as I find it
easier to get a good idea of dependencies (and especially conflicts) for
packages.

But right now starting aptitude means waiting for it to go through a
mass of conflict resolution to reach a faulty end-solution., and then
having to look through the false positive conflicts/brokenness
information, and discarding those (remove xx pagackes - and then most of
the rest of the system thanks to dependencies? no thanks) before being
able to do anything. So high does seem on the low side, and critical is
more accurate.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/831768

Title:
  aptitude cannot handle conflicts with multiarch enabled

Status in aptitude:
  New
Status in “aptitude” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged
Status in “aptitude” source package in Oneiric:
  Triaged
Status in “aptitude” source package in Precise:
  Triaged
Status in Baltix GNU/Linux:
  Incomplete
Status in “aptitude” package in Debian:
  New

Bug description:
  TEST CASE:
  1. Enable multiarch (should be automatic on new oneiric systems)
  2. Install an i386 package on amd64 (like flashplugin-installer:i386)
  3. Mark something with a lot of dependencies for installation
  4. On the confirmation screen, try to remove on of the dependencies (aptitude will now fail to perform upgrades when there's a package conflict w/out removing the i386 libs)

  This renders aptitude painful on a multiarch enabled system (default
  in oneiric).

  WORKAROUND:
  1. If you can survive without 32 bit libraries, just comment out the single line in /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/multiarch; or
  2. Use another package manager (e.g. apt-get, synaptic, or Software Center)

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
  Package: aptitude 0.6.4-1ubuntu2
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.12-generic 3.0.3
  Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic x86_64
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Tue Aug 23 00:28:38 2011
  ProcEnviron:
   PATH=(custom, no user)
   LANG=C
   SHELL=/bin/bash
  SourcePackage: aptitude
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-03-06 (169 days ago)

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