Apt and apt-get reporting different lists of packages to be held back/upgraded

[Eric Reinhardt]

When running apt-get from a script (or command line), I see a different list of packages to be held back / upgraded vs when I run apt.

I am running Kubuntu 23.04. The version of apt and apt-get I first noticed the problem in is 2.6.0ubuntu0.1
I also see the problem on my servers running Ubuntu 22.04.3 with apt and apt-get version 2.4.10.
I upgraded my copy on Kubuntu 23.04 to 2.7.6 through the launchpad.net ppa deity/sid (actually version 2.7.6+0~202309200852~ubuntu23.04.1) and the problem remains.

I've spent a few hours looking for the correct place to search for this being already reported and have reviewed recent commits at https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt. I'm hesitant but I do not see any other mention of this issue. I have tried deleting my /var/cache/apt and running apt update. To duplicate the issue one needs to have an Ubuntu version that has not yet received the update to linux-headers-6.2.0-34, et al. I attempted to duplicate the issue on a fresh install of Ubuntu Desktop 23.04, but discovered that the system is upgraded to linux 6.2.0-34 during the install process. Please see the output of the apt-get and apt commands below.

$ apt-get update
Hit:1 http://ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu lunar InRelease
Hit:2 http://ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu lunar-updates InRelease
Hit:3 http://ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu lunar-backports InRelease
Hit:4 https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu lunar InRelease
Hit:5 http://ftp.usf.edu/pub/ubuntu lunar-security InRelease
Hit:6 http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable InRelease
Hit:7 https://repo.steampowered.com/steam stable InRelease
Hit:8 https://pkg.cloudflareclient.com jammy InRelease
Hit:9 https://download.sublimetext.com apt/stable/ InRelease
Get:10 https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/ubuntu jammy InRelease
Ign:11 https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb stable InRelease
Hit:12 https://repo.vivaldi.com/stable/deb stable Release
Hit:13 https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian jammy InRelease
Ign:16 https://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge InRelease
Hit:17 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/cappelikan/ppa/ubuntu lunar InRelease
Hit:18 https://download.webmin.com/download/repository sarge Release
Hit:21 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/teejee2008/foss/ubuntu lunar InRelease
Hit:14 https://packagecloud.io/github/git-lfs/ubuntu lunar InRelease
Hit:15 https://packagecloud.io/eugeny/tabby/ubuntu jammy InRelease
Hit:22 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/cubic-wizard/release/ubuntu lunar InRelease
Hit:23 https://repo.waydro.id bullseye InRelease
Hit:24 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/deity/sid/ubuntu lunar InRelease
Hit:25 https://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/papirus/papirus/ubuntu lunar InRelease
Fetched 6,557 B in 3s (2,503 B/s)
Reading package lists... Done

$ apt-get upgrade --assume-no
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
  grub-efi-amd64-bin grub-efi-amd64-signed linux-generic linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic
The following packages will be upgraded:
  code freerdp2-x11 libfreerdp-client2-2 libfreerdp-server2-2 libfreerdp2-2 libwinpr2-2
6 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 5 not upgraded.
Need to get 97.1 MB of archives.
After this operation, 1,480 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] N
Abort.

$ apt upgrade --assume-no
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  linux-headers-6.2.0-34 linux-headers-6.2.0-34-generic linux-image-6.2.0-34-generic linux-modules-6.2.0-34-generic
  linux-modules-extra-6.2.0-34-generic
The following packages have been kept back:
  grub-efi-amd64-bin grub-efi-amd64-signed
The following packages will be upgraded:
  code freerdp2-x11 libfreerdp-client2-2 libfreerdp-server2-2 libfreerdp2-2 libwinpr2-2 linux-generic linux-headers-generic
  linux-image-generic
9 upgraded, 5 newly installed, 0 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
8 standard LTS security updates
Need to get 225 MB of archives.
After this operation, 688 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] N
Abort.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

This is a feature; not a bug. apt-get is a legacy scripting interface which tries to remain compatible with existing scripts as much as possible, hence when we enabled installing new packages as a third mode for upgrading, we only enabled it by default for apt upgrade whereas apt-get upgrade would not install new packages to enable upgrades.

You can get the same behavior for apt-get as for apt using:

    apt-get upgrade --with-new-pkgs

And inversely you can make apt upgrade hold back upgrades that would install new packages by using:

    apt upgrade --without-new-pkgs

[Eric Reinhardt (blueknight42)]

Thank you. I'd wondered how something seeingly so significant had gone unnoticed. I apologize for the invalid bug report.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

It's fine, it's pretty non-obvious that the two differ in some behaviors and even more so that it's intentional.