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I've done that a few times with not even a trace of reply that the thing was even read. I'm a bit discouraged, I though I'd just report it here and if anyone in the loop is interested they can follow up on it.
Neither librecad nor libreoffice are installed on my system, and 'dpkg -V' correctly reports that fact, but 'aptitude' returns '1' for 'librecad', which is not installed and '0' for both 'grep', which is installed, and 'libreoffice' which is not installed. Surely that is not helpful?
BTW how would we say that 'no explanation can be constructed' when aptitude correctly reports that librecad is "Not currently installed"?? It sounds like an explanation to me: librecad isn't installed, no?
These kinds of threads pop up now and then on the forum, and on debian-user list. Sometimes they go on and on, and I find them kind of interesting, especially if they explain the documentation better. They sometimes end up in a long drawn out argument though, and that's no fun.
If there's a bug in an app, or in the documentation it should be reported and corrected. So what's the bug?
The bug IMHO is that aptitude should report libreoffice as uninstalled just as dpkg -V does and which is in fact the truth. So far every other uninstalled package I've tried is reported as uninstalled by aptitude, with this one exception. This could be a bug in aptitude but since this only happens on this one occasion (so far) I'm inclined to think there's some issue with the libreoffice package such that whatever aptitude does to determine install status does not work on this one occasion. dpkg must use some other test, cuz dpkg gets it right. Again, I suspect some glitch in the libreoffice package, tho again since dpkg gets it right, it could be a problem within aptitude itself (heck, maybe dpkg would get it wrong on some other package that aptitude reports correctly.)
But you're not asking aptitude whether a package is installed or not, your asking if it can find a reason to install it, and it's return code for this function is as per the man page - YOU are basing your 'echo installed' output on an incorrect assumption.
Yet it does report that librecad is not installed, why should it be different for libreoffice? Nevermind, if no one is interested in this, or if you want to not see the problem then you will not see it. I did my duty reporting it. I have a script that needs to check on install status of packages, I'll just use 'dpkg -V' that seems to work every time.
rayandrews wrote:Yet it does report that librecad is not installed, why should it be different for libreoffice? Nevermind, if no one is interested in this, or if you want to not see the problem then you will not see it. I did my duty reporting it. I have a script that needs to check on install status of packages, I'll just use 'dpkg -V' that seems to work every time.
Excuse me Ray, but this is a help forum. If you feel there is a bug then report it to the developers, that would be your duty. Don't rave at people that answer your question but you don't seem to want to listen to their response.
I am not irrational, I'm just quantum probabilistic.
Sometimes a bug is not really a bug, so the first step is just to ask if it IS a bug. Since no one here agrees that it is a bug I figger I'll just drop it. BTW how you you check install status? There's several methods of course, which is best? I like 'aptitude why' because it gives three statuses: installed, uninstalled, or no such package.
Oh, and I don't mean to rant. I just find it puzzling that this ONE exception to otherwise predictable behavior would not be seen as a bug.
rayandrews wrote:BTW how you you check install status? There's several methods of course, which is best? I like 'aptitude why' because it gives three statuses: installed, uninstalled, or no such package.
Or 'aptitude show <package>' and grepping for the status field.
The problem with your original approach is that 'aptitude why' isn't really interested if it's installed or not, only in analyzing current state of the dependency chains related to it.
If you look at it that way. It seems uncharitable tho, since every other uninstalled package is reported as uninstalled, and in this one case it is not. It is the *exception* that bothers me even if you could say that aptitude why isn't really interested. Perhaps it gets off on the technicality tho.