[Bug 1123710] Re: wine1.4:i386 not installable on raring amd64

Daniel Hartwig mandyke at gmail.com
Mon Feb 18 01:27:51 UTC 2013


> This is in fact a bug in apt as well. A fresh install of 64-bit raring will
> try to pull in gnome-exe-thumbnailer:i386, which in turn will ask for
> icoutils:i386, which will then conflict:
>  libunity-webapps0 : Depends: unity-webapps-service but it is not going to be installed
>
> Rather than give up and declare it hopeless here, apt should instead just not
> try to install the merely recommended package gnome-exe-thumbnailer:i386.

I'm not so sure this is sensible, as relaxing the behaviour of APT
::Install-Recommends will lead to unpredictable results, especially in
the presence of other transient packaging or non-availability errors.
The expectation when installing a package is that any recommends are
also installed.  If a recommended package is not available at the time
and simply ignored, it will not be handled subsequently by upgrades to
the base package.  This is important behaviour to preserve the users
ability to manually override particular recommends.

To quote debian-policy:

> Recommends
> This declares a strong, but not absolute, dependency.
>
> The Recommends field should list packages that would be found
>  together with this one in all but unusual installations.

If a package recommends another that is either unavailable or
uninstallable, that is not merely an unusual situation, it is *broken*.
In my understanding, the treatment of recommends as dependencies *while
installing a package* should not be changed unless manually overridden
(by, say, ‘apt-get install foo bar-’).  If a package recommends another,
it is declaring a relationship that is expected to hold by default and
care must be taken to ensure that recommended packages are co-
installable (i.e. m-a foreign down as far as required).

I would consider this issue purely packaging and mark as invalid for
apt, though perhaps some apt developers have a comment.

Regards

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1123710

Title:
  wine1.4:i386 not installable on raring amd64

Status in “apt” package in Ubuntu:
  New
Status in “gnome-exe-thumbnailer” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “ttf-droid” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed
Status in “ttf-liberation” package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress
Status in “ttf-umefont” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed
Status in “ttf-unfonts-core” package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress
Status in “ttf-wqy-microhei” package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress
Status in “wine1.4” package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in “winetricks” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in “xdg-utils” package in Ubuntu:
  In Progress
Status in Debian GNU/Linux:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  If a user wants 32-bit only wine, a reasonable way to get it would be
  to install wine1.4:i386.  However, this is not possible on amd64.
  Currently apt spews this complaint:

   wine1.4:i386 : Depends: wine1.4-i386:i386 (= 1.4.1-0ubuntu4)
                  Recommends: gnome-exe-thumbnailer:i386 but it is not installable or
                              kde-runtime:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                  Recommends: ttf-droid:i386 but it is not installable
                  Recommends: ttf-liberation:i386 but it is not installable
                  Recommends: ttf-umefont:i386 but it is not installable
                  Recommends: ttf-unfonts-core:i386 but it is not installable
                  Recommends: ttf-wqy-microhei:i386 but it is not installable
                  Recommends: winetricks:i386 but it is not going to be installed
                  Recommends: xdg-utils:i386 but it is not installable

  gnome-exe-thumbnailer, xdg-utils, and the fonts are arch: all and
  should be marked multiarch:foreign to indicate that it is ok to
  install them for the nonnative wine1.4 (they are cross-arch shell
  scripts).  winetricks is currently arch i386 and amd64 and should
  probably be marked arch: all (especially for upcoming arm wine).

  apt will then freak out about conflicts and give up.  apt-get --no-
  install-recommends wine1.4:i386, however, will actually complete.  I'm
  not sure this is correct behavior for apt, as in principle it should
  be able to figure out that it can succeed with the command by omitting
  recommended packages.

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