Replying to this old mail, as I have new information... On 2020-04-21 19:09:32 +0200, Sven Joachim wrote: > On 2020-04-21 17:07 +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote: > > Sometimes packages get renamed. A renamed package becomes a > > "transitional package", which can be tracked by deborphan and > > can safely removed if it no longer has any reverse dependencies. > > > > The issue is that if this was a manually installed package, > > typically with no past dependencies on it (i.e. no dependencies > > that were updated from the old package to the new one), and if one > > wants to remove it, then apt or aptitude will also want to remove > > the new package because this new package has not been installed > > manually and its only reverse dependency (the transitional package) > > has just been removed by this operation. Note: as shown below, with > > apt, this is proposed via "apt autoremove", and with aptitude, this > > is automatically proposed at the same time. > > > > Is there a way to avoid this behavior automatically, i.e. by > > forwarding the "manually installed" state automatically to the > > new package? Shouldn't this be done by default? > > It is done (at least by apt, not so sure about aptitude) if the > transitional package is moved to the oldlibs section. Unfortunately, > the section of packages is determined by the FTP masters' override file > and is usually only changed months after the initial upload.
Unfortunately, I could see that aptitude doesn't: ntpdate became a transitional package, which is in the oldlibs section: Package: ntpdate Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: oldlibs Installed-Size: 65 Maintainer: Richard Laager <rlaa...@debian.org> Architecture: all Source: ntpsec (1.2.1+dfsg1-6) Version: 1:4.2.8p15+dfsg-2~1.2.1+dfsg1-6 Depends: ntpsec-ntpdate Conffiles: /etc/logcheck/ignore.d.server/ntpdate 68d4df7cceb0e97bde87126c3a56b219 obsolete /etc/dhcp/dhclient-exit-hooks.d/ntpdate cb47fd9d3e21a204fb3ba4ca3fc8ab46 obsolete /etc/default/ntpdate 71d857cae72ae1f53380ea4f2e38cb2e obsolete Description: Network Time Protocol client (transitional package) This is a dummy transitional package to transition to NTPsec. It can be safely removed. Homepage: https://www.ntpsec.org And after doing the upgrade with aptitude, I get: i ntpdate 1:4.2.8p15+dfsg-2~1.2.1+ 1:4.2.8p15+dfsg-2~1.2.1+ i A ntpsec-ntpdate 1.2.1+dfsg1-6 1.2.1+dfsg1-6 So ntpdate is still marked as manually installed, but ntpsec-ntpdate, which has just been installed during the upgrade due to the ntpdate dependency, is marked as automatically installed. -- Vincent Lefèvre <vinc...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
