Comment 3 for bug 1694989

Is it really /any/ which I can't confirm at the moment as holding e.g. apt & dpkg works just fine…

The underlying question is: Are the packages you are trying to hold installed? If not, dpkg will accept the hold at first and record it (so apt will report it on showhold again), but as soon as the dpkg/status file is modified again (e.g. with another hold), the record for the uninstalled package is cleaned up removing the hold.

That is intended behavior by dpkg upstream according to earlier talks (and in there since ever, but I think the situations in which cleanup happens increased over time). We were thinking of having some way of having dpkg store such info even for not installed packages, but then life (& freeze) happened I guess, so there is nothing to show off apart from "yeah, we should be doing something, maybe".

Perhaps we should just change apt to not accept holds for non-installed packages until that is resolved in some way.