Broken APT -- how to fix this?

[Colin Watson]

On Sun, Dec 04, 2022 at 03:21:19PM -0500, Robert Heller wrote:
> *Originally* I had set up this VM some time ago, running Ubuntu 16.04 and an
> older version of the MXE packages. A couple of years ago, I stopped support
> for cross-built MS-Windows packages for my MRR System package and pretty much
> left this VM shut off, but not deleted (and did not bother to keep it
> up-to-date, since I was not running it). Recently, I picked up a possible
> contract job that might involve building a package for MS-Windows, so I fired
> up this VM, updated it to Ubuntu 18.04 and then went to update the MXE
> packages, including installing suport the x86_64 target. Apt proceded to go
> south. The cure was to un-install the MXE packages (with dpkg --purge, not
> apt). Once ALL of the MXE packages were uninstalled, apt behaved and installed
> all of the MXE packages.

Right, it sounds like the MXE packagers haven't taken quite as much care
to ensure smooth upgrades as might be ideal; this isn't uncommon for
third-party repositories, since making sure upgrades are smooth is a
fair bit of work.  There are other possible approaches with varying
levels of expertise, but removing all those packages (there's usually no
need to purge, just remove) and then re-installing current versions is
indeed a pretty reliable workaround.

-- 
Colin Watson (he/him)                              [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]