Bug#838760: perl: Perl/Perl-base upgrade removes 141 packages (Sid/Unstable)

[Russ Allbery]

Cindy Sue Causey  writes:

> Hi! Thank you for all the hard work you all to so #poverty level folks
> have a chance to keep up with the tech world, too! As to why I'm
> writing, just tried to upgrade a select 30+ packages in
> Sid/Unstable. Apt-get is my chosen method to do so. Received the message
> that Received the advisement that:

> 2 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 141 to remove

> ALMOST let it happen because I was in a hurry and didn't immediately
> catch that message. Only thing I know to do in this kind of situation is
> to set Perl and Perl-base aside and wait for the next release so that's
> how I'm approaching it today.

For future reference, you get results like this mostly from apt-get
install of specific packages, since then apt-get goes to considerably more
lengths to try to do what you're telling it to do (including contemplating
removing temporarily conflicting packages).

If instead you do a whole-system upgrade with apt-get upgrade, you'll see
all these packages will just be held back until they can be safely
upgraded.  Even if you use the more aggressive apt-get dist-upgrade, right
now you get something (depending on the packages you have installed) like:

# apt dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree   
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Error!
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 libenchant1c2a : Depends: aspell-en but it is not going to be installed or
   myspell-dictionary or
   aspell-dictionary or
   ispell-dictionary or
   hunspell-dictionary
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by 
held packages.

which is not horribly informative but at least doesn't do the wrong thing.

You probably have reasons to want to upgrade specific packages instead of
your system in better, but it's worth being aware that this is one case
where this can be less safe (if you don't watch apt-get closely) than
letting it use its normal upgrade semantics.  (Also, a general upgrade is
safer in that you'll always get security updates.)

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   

Bug#838760: perl: Perl/Perl-base upgrade removes 141 packages (Sid/Unstable)

[Cindy Sue Causey]

Package: perl
Version: 5.22.2-5
Severity: critical
Justification: breaks unrelated software

Dear Maintainer,

Hi! Thank you for all the hard work you all to so #poverty level folks have a 
chance to keep up with the tech world, too! As to why I'm writing, just tried 
to upgrade a select 30+ packages in Sid/Unstable. Apt-get is my chosen method 
to do so. Received the message that  Received the advisement that:

2 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 141 to remove

ALMOST let it happen because I was in a hurry and didn't immediately catch that 
message. Only thing I know to do in this kind of situation is to set Perl and 
Perl-base aside and wait for the next release so that's how I'm approaching it 
today.

As a disclaimer that just came to mind, other important packages are not yet 
upgraded, as well. Those include cpp-6, libreoffice, linux-image-4.7.0-1-amd64, 
and linux-source-4.7. Reason is that I'm on dialup and am currently looking at 
approximately 400MB of upgrades that must be done incrementally. I always 
upgrade the smaller packages first. I figure that's important to know since 
each personally developed Debian system understandably succeeds and fails based 
on what's available within itself.

The same attempt at 141 package removals occurs for both Perl and Perl-base but 
for now am only filing the bug against the primary "perl" unless you advise 
otherwise.

Lastly, I didn't know if it was important for you to know which packages were 
affected so they are all included directly below.

Thank you again *so much* for all you do. Happy Debian'ing!!! :)

Cindy Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA
* runs with duct tape*


+ + + BEGIN COPY OF APT-GET'S PERL UPGRADE ADVISEMENT + + +

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libperl5.24 perl-modules-5.24

The following packages will be REMOVED:
  apt-file apt-show-versions aspell aspell-en claws-mail claws-mail-i18n
  console-setup console-setup-linux debconf-i18n debsums dictionaries-common
  enchant gnome-user-guide hunspell-en-us inkscape keyboard-configuration
  libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl libapt-pkg-perl libb-hooks-endofscope-perl
  libcairo-perl libcgi-fast-perl libcgi-pm-perl libclass-accessor-perl
  libclass-xsaccessor-perl libclone-perl libcrypt-ssleay-perl
  libdata-alias-perl libdata-optlist-perl libemail-valid-perl libenchant1c2a
  libfcgi-perl libfile-fcntllock-perl libfile-fnmatch-perl
  libfile-libmagic-perl libgetopt-long-descriptive-perl libglib-perl
  libgtk2-gladexml-perl libgtk2-perl libgtkspell0 libgtkspell3-3-0
  libhtml-form-perl libhtml-format-perl libhtml-parser-perl libhtml-tree-perl
  libimage-magick-perl libimage-magick-q16-perl libimport-into-perl
  libio-pty-perl libio-socket-inet6-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl libipc-run-perl
  liblist-moreutils-perl liblocale-gettext-perl liblwp-protocol-https-perl
  libmailtools-perl libmath-random-isaac-xs-perl libmime-tools-perl
  libmodule-implementation-perl libmodule-runtime-perl libmoo-perl
  libnamespace-clean-perl libnet-dbus-perl libnet-dns-perl
  libnet-smtp-ssl-perl libnet-ssleay-perl libossp-uuid-perl
  libpackage-stash-perl libpackage-stash-xs-perl libpango-perl
  libparams-classify-perl libparams-util-perl libparams-validate-perl
  libparse-debianchangelog-perl libperlio-gzip-perl libscalar-list-utils-perl
  libsoap-lite-perl libsocket6-perl libsort-key-perl libsub-exporter-perl
  libsub-identify-perl libsub-name-perl libsvn-perl libtext-charwidth-perl
  libtext-iconv-perl libtext-wrapi18n-perl libunicode-utf8-perl
  libvariable-magic-perl libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37-gtk2
  libwebkitgtk-3.0-0 libwww-perl libxml-parser-perl libxml-twig-perl
  libxmlrpc-lite-perl libyaml-libyaml-perl libyelp0 licensecheck lintian
  miscfiles modem-manager-gui moreutils packaging-dev piuparts qemu-launcher
  svn-buildpackage tasksel tasksel-data xombrero xorg xscreensaver
  xscreensaver-data xserver-xorg xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-input-all
  xserver-xorg-input-evdev xserver-xorg-input-libinput
  xserver-xorg-input-mouse xserver-xorg-input-synaptics
  xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse xserver-xorg-input-wacom xserver-xorg-video-all
  xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu xserver-xorg-video-ati xserver-xorg-video-cirrus
  xserver-xorg-video-fbdev xserver-xorg-video-intel xserver-xorg-video-mach64
  xserver-xorg-video-mga xserver-xorg-video-neomagic
  xserver-xorg-video-nouveau xserver-xorg-video-openchrome
  xserver-xorg-video-qxl xserver-xorg-video-r128 xserver-xorg-video-radeon
  xserver-xorg-video-savage xserver-xorg-video-sisusb xserver-xorg-video-tdfx
  xserver-xorg-video-trident xserver-xorg-video-vesa xserver-xorg-video-vmware
  yelp

+ + + END COPY OF APT-GET'S PERL UPGRADE ADVISEMENT + + +


-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.7.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash