#755222 fgo: invalid "Recommends" breaks apt-get source flightgear/testing

Package:
apt
Source:
apt
Description:
commandline package manager
Submitter:
Frank Heckenbach
Date:
2014-07-21 01:27:21 UTC
Severity:
normal
#755222#5
Date:
2014-07-18 21:04:15 UTC
From:
To:
The version in wheezy contains:

Recommends: flightgear (>= 2.0.0)

But flightgear does not exist in wheezy.

I tried to get its sources from testing to build it myself, but it
didn't work:

% apt-get source flightgear/testing
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Ignore unavailable target release 'testing' of package 'flightgear'
E: Unable to find a source package for

(Of course, I have a deb-src entry for jessie in my sources list.)

It took me quite a while to figure it out (basically grepping for
all occurences of "flightgear" in the lists), but indeed this
"Recommends" line is the guilty one. I don't understand exactly why
that's so, but after manually removing this line from
ftp.de.debian.org_debian_dists_wheezy_main_binary-i386_Packages
the "apt-get source" works (and so did building flightgear).

So please remove this "Recommends", since it can't be satisfied on
wheezy anyway. (I don't use fgo myself, and from its description it
looks like it's pointless without flightgear too, but I guess it's
too late to remove fgo from wheezy.)

#755222#10
Date:
2014-07-19 09:55:54 UTC
From:
To:
control: severity -1 normal

Hi,

when recommends are not available, they are not installed and nothing bad
happens. You suggest to remove the bogus recommends in this bug, as flightgear
seems to work perfectly without it, so how can this bug be "critical" and not
"normal"? It doesnt break anything to have bogus recommends.


cheers,
	Hplger

#755222#15
Date:
2014-07-19 09:55:54 UTC
From:
To:
control: severity -1 normal

Hi,

when recommends are not available, they are not installed and nothing bad
happens. You suggest to remove the bogus recommends in this bug, as flightgear
seems to work perfectly without it, so how can this bug be "critical" and not
"normal"? It doesnt break anything to have bogus recommends.


cheers,
	Hplger

#755222#20
Date:
2014-07-19 10:13:25 UTC
From:
To:
Control: reassign -1 apt
The bug is that it does break apt-get source...but if unsatisfiable
Recommends are not against policy, that's an apt bug (probably related
to #607999), not an fgo bug.

Do you have a deb (not just deb-src: see #441178/#626251) line for testing?

Do either of the following work?
apt-get source flightgear/testing --only-source
apt-get source flightgear=3.0.0-2

#755222#27
Date:
2014-07-19 10:13:25 UTC
From:
To:
Control: reassign -1 apt
The bug is that it does break apt-get source...but if unsatisfiable
Recommends are not against policy, that's an apt bug (probably related
to #607999), not an fgo bug.

Do you have a deb (not just deb-src: see #441178/#626251) line for testing?

Do either of the following work?
apt-get source flightgear/testing --only-source
apt-get source flightgear=3.0.0-2

#755222#32
Date:
2014-07-19 13:50:14 UTC
From:
To:
Control: fixed -1 apt/0.9.14

As Rebecca already pointed out, the above line is the real issue.

I can confirm that this fails on wheezy even with deb (and not only
deb-src) lines defined.

However, that error message has recently vanished from apt (with commit
4652a9eee39df1cefa49ab177c0cfc50b9aad567 on Dec 4 2013) during a
refactoring.

I back-ported that very revision to wheezy and checked again. It fetches
the flightgear sources just fine with `apt-get source
flightgear/testing`. So it seems this is already fixed (for testing).

Regards

Markus Wanner

#755222#39
Date:
2014-07-21 01:01:46 UTC
From:
To:
Rebecca N. Palmer wrote:

No. Since basically every relevant web page tells you "don't install
binaries from another release, backport the sources", I only added
deb-src lines to avoid accidentally getting testing binaries pulled
by some dependency sometime.

And sorry for not checking every 3-7 year old bug before trying to
use a basic Debian tool such as apt-get ... ;)

But as Markus Wanner wrote, that doesn't seem to be the issue,
anyway.

Yes. (Though I have no idea how a normal user is supposed to
recognize this option as relevant. -- I still don't understand,
after reading the manpage again, why it helps, only notice that it
apparently does.)

(Yes, but I want it find the current version number automatically;
otherwise I could just ftp the files directly.)

Frank

#755222#44
Date:
2014-07-21 01:01:46 UTC
From:
To:
Rebecca N. Palmer wrote:

No. Since basically every relevant web page tells you "don't install
binaries from another release, backport the sources", I only added
deb-src lines to avoid accidentally getting testing binaries pulled
by some dependency sometime.

And sorry for not checking every 3-7 year old bug before trying to
use a basic Debian tool such as apt-get ... ;)

But as Markus Wanner wrote, that doesn't seem to be the issue,
anyway.

Yes. (Though I have no idea how a normal user is supposed to
recognize this option as relevant. -- I still don't understand,
after reading the manpage again, why it helps, only notice that it
apparently does.)

(Yes, but I want it find the current version number automatically;
otherwise I could just ftp the files directly.)

Frank

#755222#47
Date:
2014-07-21 01:01:46 UTC
From:
To:
Rebecca N. Palmer wrote:

No. Since basically every relevant web page tells you "don't install
binaries from another release, backport the sources", I only added
deb-src lines to avoid accidentally getting testing binaries pulled
by some dependency sometime.

And sorry for not checking every 3-7 year old bug before trying to
use a basic Debian tool such as apt-get ... ;)

But as Markus Wanner wrote, that doesn't seem to be the issue,
anyway.

Yes. (Though I have no idea how a normal user is supposed to
recognize this option as relevant. -- I still don't understand,
after reading the manpage again, why it helps, only notice that it
apparently does.)

(Yes, but I want it find the current version number automatically;
otherwise I could just ftp the files directly.)

Frank