confusing apt errors for all to any dependencies

[Keywan Tonekaboni]

Hi,

I know, there is no Sun Java 5 for Linux/PowerPC, but I was curios:

prometoys@cassini:~$ LC_ALL=C !!
LC_ALL=C sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jre
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
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.

Since you only requested a single operation it is extremely likely that
the package is simply not installable and a bug report against
that package should be filed.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  sun-java5-jre: Depends: sun-java5-bin (= 1.5.0-06-1) but it is not installable or
                          ia32-sun-java5-bin (= 1.5.0-06-1) but it is not installable
E: Broken packages

prometoys@cassini:~$ LC_ALL=C sudo apt-get install sun-java5-bin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Package sun-java5-bin is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  sun-java5-jre
E: Package sun-java5-bin has no installation candidate

sun-java5-jre depends on sun-java5-bin, but this is replaced sun-java5-jre?!?

It's like you need chicken to have an egg, but needs an egg to have a chicken.

A clearer error would be nice or installing ibm java instead

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

reassigned to apt; but I would suggest rejecting the report. there's not much we can do about it.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

There's nothing we can do about it.