aptitude: auto-selects wrong packages

[Enrico Weigelt, metux ITS]

Aptitude automatically selects recommended packages.

Neither --without-recommends nor setting APT::Install-Recommends seem to have any influence.

Reproduce:

* kick out packages which are just recommended (using apt-get)
* start aptitude
* press "g"

This behavious is observed since several releases, at least existing in several releases
(at least in saucy and trusty).

It renders aptitude virtually unusable in cases where you do NOT want the recommended
packages installed automatically.

[Axel Beckert (xtaran)]

Hi,

Enrico Weigelt, metux ITS wrote:
> Aptitude automatically selects recommended packages.
>
> Neither --without-recommends nor setting APT::Install-Recommends seem to
> have any influence.

At least on Debian I'm always using aptitude with
APT::Install-Recommends disabled and it works as expected that way.
Additionally, we use aptitude-robot with that setting on Precise and
Trusty and it works as expected, too.

> * kick out packages which are just recommended (using apt-get)
> * start aptitude
> * press "g"

Sounds like wrong usage/expectations to me.

Please kick them out with aptitude instead of apt-get and try again.
I'm quite sure, the behaviour you described will be gone.

Background:

In comparison to apt-get, aptitude has the feature that you can
preselect packages without installing them and then install them
later. By default, this happens on the next aptitude call which does
install, upgrade or remove something.

If you installed the packages in question with aptitude, aptitude may
still remember that you told it that you want them once.

Conclusion:

The only potential issue I see here is that the package states from
apt-get are possibly not synced to aptitude in the most intuitive way.

This may be on purpose, though. At least I'm expecting such behaviour
from aptitude and use it to my advantage.

Daniel, any insight from you?

Recommendation:

Don't mix apt-get and aptitude unless you know what you're doing, i.e.
understood what the differences between aptitude and apt-get are. (And
no, I don't mean the different UIs. And yes, there are cases where you
want to mix it explicitly.)

  Regards, Axel
--
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[Enrico Weigelt, metux ITS (metux)]

After some digging, I've found the packages in question in /var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates - all with state 3.

Some some strange reason, aptitude recorded these packages there, even I never installed
them directly. Could this somehow have happened on release-upgrade ?

[Daniel Hartwig (wigs)]

On 27 June 2014 17:01, Axel Beckert <email address hidden> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Enrico Weigelt, metux ITS wrote:
>> Aptitude automatically selects recommended packages.
>>
>> Neither --without-recommends nor setting APT::Install-Recommends seem to
>> have any influence.
>
> At least on Debian I'm always using aptitude with
> APT::Install-Recommends disabled and it works as expected that way.
> Additionally, we use aptitude-robot with that setting on Precise and
> Trusty and it works as expected, too.
>
>> * kick out packages which are just recommended (using apt-get)
>> * start aptitude
>> * press "g"
>
> Sounds like wrong usage/expectations to me.
>
> Please kick them out with aptitude instead of apt-get and try again.
> I'm quite sure, the behaviour you described will be gone.
>

Right, that should at least correct things for now.

> Background:
>
> In comparison to apt-get, aptitude has the feature that you can
> preselect packages without installing them and then install them
> later. By default, this happens on the next aptitude call which does
> install, upgrade or remove something.
>
> If you installed the packages in question with aptitude, aptitude may
> still remember that you told it that you want them once.
>

Yes (even if you did not directly ask for those packages). In this
case I think aptitude is confused and some extended state is being
persisted that should not be. I believe there is a similar report on
bugs.d.o.

> Conclusion:
>
> The only potential issue I see here is that the package states from
> apt-get are possibly not synced to aptitude in the most intuitive way.
>

A lot of guess work is involved, and it could never be a perfect match
for what every user expects. But, yes, some improvement could be
made.

> This may be on purpose, though. At least I'm expecting such behaviour
> from aptitude and use it to my advantage.
>
> Daniel, any insight from you?
>

I agree with your recommendation not to mix apt-get and aptitude, even
if there were not a bug here.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for aptitude (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]