So indeed in the man page To remove the forbidden version without installing the candidate version, the current version should be appended: "install <package>=<version>".
is utterly totally wrong. Please remove it. set debian-reference-en aptitude forbid-version $@ aptitude search $@ #shows F aptitude install $@=2.59 # abort with n, we don't want to install it. aptitude search $@ #still F Note I use Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt "true"; Please change it to Currently there is no way to remove the forbidden version without installing the candidate version. Or better Currently there is no way to remove the forbidden version NOTATION without installing the candidate version. Yes I know about hold.