aptitude doesn't report broken package dependencies

[Shirish Agarwal]

Binary package hint: aptitude

Running aptitude 0.4.4

To state :-

 sudo aptitude install gmailfs
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
Building tag database... Done
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Writing extended state information... Done

Running sudo apt-get install gmailfs tells the real reason why it can't be done.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... 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:
  gmailfs: Depends: python-fuse (>= 2.2-2) but it is not going to be installed
E: Broken packages

 Please look into it.

[Shirish Agarwal (shirishag75)]

When I installed python-fuse (which is a dependency)

sudo aptitude install python-fuse
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Building tag database... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  python-fuse
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/41.1kB of archives. After unpacking 193kB will be used.
Writing extended state information... Done
Selecting previously deselected package python-fuse.
(Reading database ... 125071 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking python-fuse (from .../python-fuse_1%3a0.2-pre3-3_i386.deb) ...
Setting up python-fuse (1:0.2-pre3-3) ...

& hence shouldn't have happened in the first case.

Again trying to install gmailfs (now) gives me the correct error report-

sudo aptitude install gmailfs
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
Building tag database... Done
The following packages are BROKEN:
  python-fuse
The following NEW packages will be automatically installed:
  encfs librlog1c2a python-libgmail
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  encfs gmailfs librlog1c2a python-libgmail
0 packages upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 25.6kB/350kB of archives. After unpacking 1651kB will be used.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  python-fuse: Conflicts: gmailfs (<= 0.7.3-4) but 0.7.3-2 is to be installed.
Resolving dependencies...
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Keep the following packages at their current version:
gmailfs [Not Installed]

Score is -9999

[Sarah Kowalik (hobbsee-deactivatedaccount)]

not a bug in aptitude, this is the way aptitude handles broken dependancies. The lack of output you got seems normal, the first time you tried.

[Sarah Kowalik (hobbsee-deactivatedaccount)]

s/normal/local/