On 2025-08-05 08:42:38 +0200, Julian Andres Klode wrote: > That's a bit separate from aptitude why's goal. aptitude why doesn't > tell you why a package is installed, but the strongest reason why an > installed package could lead to the package being installed.
But I don't see how this makes sense in the case > > cventin% aptitude why ncal > > i quilt Depends bsdextrautils | bsdmainutils > > p bsdmainutils Depends ncal Here, it is bsdextrautils that is installed; bsdmainutils is not installed. So the dependency on ncal does not have to be satisfied. And the strongest reason why ncal is installed is that it is actually manually installed. Note that "aptitude why" says whenever a package in the chain is manually installed, *except* for the target package. Information on whether the target package is automatically installed / manually installed or not installed would be useful. For instance: cventin% aptitude why dracut-install i initramfs-tools Depends initramfs-tools-core (= 0.148.3) i A initramfs-tools-core Depends dracut-install Here one knows that initramfs-tools is manually installed and that initramfs-tools-core is automatically installed (because of the "A"), but there is no such information for dracut-install. A third line could have been useful, such as i initramfs-tools Depends initramfs-tools-core (= 0.148.3) i A initramfs-tools-core Depends dracut-install i A dracut-install I also get cventin% aptitude why bsdmainutils i quilt Depends bsdextrautils | bsdmainutils while here bsdmainutils is not installed. This is misleading: if I remove quilt, then installed it again, it will not install bsdmainutils, because bsdextrautils comes first. So, what's the purpose of "aptitude why" in such a case? -- Vincent Lefèvre <[email protected]> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Pascaline project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
