Aptitude problem

[Derek Broughton]

Michael Moore wrote:

>> Duh.  That's not the question.
> 
> C'mon, let's be nice, he was trying to help out here.

Then he should have read the question.  I already pointed out that I knew
why the package list was as it was...
> 
>> I don't use synaptic, and I'm never likely to use synaptic
>>
>> I didn't even have a problem with the list of packages - all (or at least
>> most) of those packages are supposed to be removed because they were
>> auto-installed as dependencies of xorg-driver-synaptic which now only
>> depends on xorg-server-core instead of xorg-server.
> 
> It's possible that xorg-server was installed as a dependency of
> something else, such as the old  kdelibs-bin that was being upgraded. 

No, xorg-driver-synaptic: I knew why...

> If that was in fact what it was and the new kdelibs doesn't depend on
> it, that might be a problem.
> 
>> However, an "apt-get upgrade" would _never_ remove any packages, and aiui
>> aptitude is supposed to behave the same way.  So why did aptitude try to
>> remove them on an upgrade?
> 
> How sure are you about that? Did you try apt-get upgrade? 

Of course, and it doesn't remove any packages.  It's in the definition of
"upgrade": "Packages currently installed with new versions available are
retrieved and upgraded; under no circumstances are currently installed
packages removed, or packages not already installed retrieved".  

However, I suppose I should rtfm myself, since it turns out aptitude doesn't
guarantee that behavior for what it believes to be no-longer-used packages. 
I'm not at all sure how I feel about that - I always liked being able to do
an upgrade when I had lots of package changes to narrow it all down before
doing the really destructive stuff.
--
derek