Comment 24 for bug 424643

I agree on David (above). I observed this bug after upgrading from karmic to lucid. Also i observed that though "Recommended Package" is selected by default in my apt configuration, there exist some package by which the relative "recommended packages" are not installed at all. Moreover, I was surprised that some package has an obviously list of recommended packages, most of them are not installed. As instance, i found the package kdm recommends metacity, e16 and a lot of packages which are clearly different neither dependent on not used by kdm at all.
So i am asking whether is it possible a lack of some recommended package determines that there are packages installed without their complete dependent package list, and so meta-packages fail?

At first sight, i don't think the problem is hard to solve and it is not related to a specific program (apt, synaptic, installer), but in a mistaken metapackage list in some meta-package. i think there is one or more metapackage with an incomplete list of dependencies OR a metapackage previously used has been discarded in the new ubuntu/kubuntu version and this was not the case for many other packages which still require that root-metapackage.
So, a solution could be to compute the graph of dependency and compare that with the list of package installed. in the graph of dependency should appear "new packages" which link the "installed (manually)" directly. These new packages are the metapackages that must be rebuild. With this solution, I don't think there would be problems (a part of course conflicts in the installation of packages) because it adds new package and does not remove existing dependencies.

I think it might be a serious problem, especially because, during upgrading from a version to the next one, if a dependency change at metapackage level for a "package suffering of this problem", there could be inchoerences in the new version for that package (e.g. it does not have all dependence installed) and the system could break. I hope to be wrong and to much pessimist, however i think it is a bug which requires to be solved asap.
Anyway, as Colin Watson said, i agree on the risk of "correcting badly that bug" could seriously damage the system, more that what it is now with this bug.

hope to be useful,

p.s.
thanks the ubuntu/kubuntu team. you are doing a good work! :D