Control: tags -1 + moreinfo
Hi Yann, 2012-05-04 14:28 Yann Dirson:
Package: aptitude Version: 0.6.6-1 * Base situation: $ apt-cache policy phonon phonon: Installed: 4:4.6.0really4.5.1-1 Candidate: 4:4.6.0.0-1 alternative "phonon-backend-vlc | phonon-backend" provided by phonon-backend-xine [...] => phonon-backend-null appears to be taken randomly, while there is a prefered alternative listed
IMO and according to policy [1], there's nothing special about the first alternative. [1] https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html I think that it's a special case for buildds or common practice that people do to ensure installability when building and so on, but nothing that the package managers have to abide to. I think that aptitude doesn't pay attention at all about the relative position, but even if it does initially, it tries to be smart about it in cases of conflicts and install packages depending on the overall solution. E.g. if you have many of the -vlc or -xine dependencies installed it might prefer one over the other, in the case of -null maybe it prefers it simply because it has to install less packages. (From a high level point of view, aptitude cannot make the cognitive leap of thinking that if "-null" is "desirable" because it installs few packages, maybe it is because in fact it provides less/no functionality compared with the others). So, all in all, I don't think that this is a bug, but a feature; and the fact that other tools prefer the first solution is to overcome limitations on their side.
Also note the side problem of an alternative removing 18 packages and breaking a Recommends being prefered over selecting another alternative. Maybe worth split the bug for this one ?
There are many about that already :-) Cheers. -- Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <[email protected]> _______________________________________________ Aptitude-devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aptitude-devel
