Ubuntu
software-center package

software-center can autoremove essential packages

Bug #680385 reported by Eemil Lagerspetz on 2010-11-23

This bug report is a duplicate of: Bug #668382: Unclear warning before removing critical packages. Edit Remove

This bug affects 1 person

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	software-center (Ubuntu)	New	Undecided	Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: software-center

I installed the binary deb for 7Kingdoms AA from here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/skfans/files/7KAA%202.14.1/
It is set to depend on libsdl1.2-debian-all. However, ubuntu-desktop depends on libsdl1.2-debian-pulseaudio, which conflicts with the former.
If I install 7kaa using gdebi-gtk, it will correctly uninstall ubuntu-desktop and libsdl1.2-debian-pulseaudio.
However, if I install it using software center, it will do the same and then start to autoremove everything that depended on ubuntu-desktop, leaving me without GDM, some graphics drivers, etc ...
I suggest that software-center would at least WARN people before destroying their system like this. A better way would be not to autoremove certain packages through software center, for example those required to run the current session of the user, or those that ubuntu-desktop depends on.

I should also say that the 7kaa package being messed up is not Ubuntu's fault, using libsdl1.2-debian-all as a dependency is not the right way, I think libsdl1.2-debian should be better. Regardless, an "easy tool" like the software center should be more foolproof.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: software-center 3.0.5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-23.36-generic 2.6.35.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-23-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Tue Nov 23 09:29:09 2010
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
LANGUAGE=en
PATH=(custom, user)
LANG=en_GB.utf8
LC_MESSAGES=en_GB.utf8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: software-center

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Revision history for this message

Eemil Lagerspetz (eemil-lagerspetz) wrote on 2010-11-23:

Dependencies.txt Edit (6.5 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

Revision history for this message

Kiwinote (kiwinote) wrote on 2010-11-27:

Hi Eemil! We are tracking the issue with software-center not consistently warning about which packages will be removed over at bug 668382, so I'll mark this bug as a duplicate of that one. Gdebi uses the same backend as software-center to determine which packages should be removed, so I would have expected the same result. Please continue to report any bugs you may find in software-center. Thanks again for your help!