restore software selection not working properly

[Marcelo Ruiz]

The Backup & Restore tool is not working as expected.
After making a backup of the software selection on Mint 17, formatting the hard drive, install Mint 17 again and tried to restore the software selection, I get a warning that says that I need to fix broken packages first. The funny thing is that Synaptic does not see broken packages (and even selecting to fix them doesn't solve the problem, nor using 'sudo apt-get install -f' at the command line).
What confirmed me that this is a bug is that I took the time to write a long command line to install all the packages that were listed in the software selection (the ones that were marked as found) and the installation went well with no problems.
I think the backup tool should, at least, give more information of the offending package or (even better) try to install all the listed packages and if that fails install them one by one, skipping the trouble ones but not stopping the execution until finishing the attempt to install as much as it can.
It will also be very useful if the backup tool had an option to show the complete command line based on what is selected in the GUI. This option at least will allow the user to copy and paste the command (sudo apt-get install ..... ) in a terminal and further examine the problem.
Furthermore, the backup tool should be able to make a backup of all the repositories used by the user, and if chosen to be restored after an upgrade, check whether they're valid before doing so.
By the way, I did backup all the repositories and restore them and run 'sudo apt-get update' before attempting to restore the software selection.
This problem is particularly relevant for new users of mint when upgrading from one version to the following: they might think the tool simply does not work.