Dependencies in focal permit a situation where dkms cannot compile

[Steve Dodd]

I'm not entirely convinced this is a bug in the dkms packaging, but I wasn't sure where else to report it.

My system has ended up in a state where dkms cannot build modules - specifically virtualbox-dkms - because /usr/bin/gcc doesn't exist.

dkms depends on gcc|c-compiler, and gcc-7 is installed, but 'gcc', which provides /usr/bin/gcc, depends on gcc >= 9, so has obviously been uninstalled at some point.

I almost certainly got here by manually removing packages with aptitude or similar, but the fact remains that dpkg & aptitude think the state of the system is consistent, yet virtualbox-dkms cannot configure because it cannot build.

My suspicion is gcc-7 should not provide gcc or c-compiler if it does not provide the /usr/bin/gcc link.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: dkms 2.8.1-5ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.13.0-40.45~20.04.1-generic 5.13.19
Uname: Linux 5.13.0-40-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.24
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
Date: Tue Jun 28 21:28:26 2022
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=screen.xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: dkms
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2021-01-14 (530 days ago)