[19:41] <OvenWerks> Eickmeyer[m]: any way from the commandline to find out _why_ apt says packages have been kept back?
[19:43] <Eickmeyer> OvenWerks: At this point, it's easy to assume it's due to phased updates.
[19:43] <OvenWerks> Eickmeyer[m]: I find lots of recipes to fix this but none that allow one to diagnose why. I think this is pretty important. It may mean I have SW installed that relies on an older version that may not be in the repo for example.
[19:44] <OvenWerks> Eickmeyer[m]: I would prefer to know rather than assume
[19:44] <Eickmeyer> There's no way to know for certain. It used to be buit-in to just the update-manager, now it's built-in to apt as well.
[19:44] <OvenWerks> but from that it would seem it is best to wait, it just seems there is always something not installed
[19:45] <OvenWerks> so it is a bug with apt then. Apt should give more information
[19:45] <Eickmeyer> Unfortunately, they'll tell you it's *not* a bug in apt.
[19:46] <Eickmeyer> https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/phased-updates-in-apt-in-21-04/20345
[19:49] <Eickmeyer> OvenWerks: ^ That might give you what you need to know, and probably something to chime-in on.
[19:50] <OvenWerks> Eickmeyer: is there a reasonable explanation of phased updates? The thread gives just enough info to make it seem these are optional but not enough to let one understand why they might be useful.
[19:51] <Eickmeyer> OvenWerks: It goes back 10 years: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PhasedUpdates
[19:52] <OvenWerks> It does seem to say that this is all the held back means and that a missing dep or bad dep would error out in a different way.
[19:52] <OvenWerks> thank you
[19:52] <Eickmeyer> It's basically so they can stop regressions before they spread.
[19:53] <OvenWerks> Ah so it means they are not using me as a lab rat.
[19:53] <OvenWerks> I can live with that
[19:54] <OvenWerks> apt could be changed to "held back due to phased release"
[19:55] <OvenWerks> The programmer only has to type in once, the users might ask what is this thousands of times
[19:55] <Eickmeyer> Right, but that isn't always true. Sometimes packages are held back due to version mismatches. The problem is it would require a lot more work to make it differentiate, and it isn't that smart yet.
[19:56] <arraybolt3[m]> There's a whole bug report and discussion about it on Launchpad, lemme see if I can pull it up...
[19:56] <Eickmeyer> arraybolt3[m]: I pulled-up the discourse conversation.
[19:56] <arraybolt3[m]> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/1988819
[19:57] <Eickmeyer> Oh, that's recent.
[19:57] <arraybolt3[m]> Also, I wrote this for helping people who ask about why updates are being held back: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1431940/what-are-phased-updates-and-why-does-ubuntu-use-them/1431941#1431941
[19:57] <arraybolt3[m]> (I still need to update the main Wiki docs, though.)
[20:12] <OvenWerks> it apears that "apt-mark showhold" should tell me if something is held due to a package error on my machine. (ie. sw from a PPA that has a dep for an old lib version.
[20:35] <OvenWerks> Hmm, so https://people.canonical.com/~ubuntu-archive/phased-updates.html shows packages that are phased... at least sru packages (are there others?) but while I have 8 packages held back, there are only two shown on that page of which only one is listed on my system as held back (the other is not installed)
[20:36] <OvenWerks> arraybolt3[m]: I am guessing this means that some of the other packages held back are dependant on that one package?
[20:37] <OvenWerks> the package held back is systemd (good choice to phase) but my list is: libnss-systemd libpam-systemd libsystemd0 libudev1 systemd systemd-sysv systemd-timesyncd udev
[20:37] <OvenWerks> Most would probably depend on that package, udev I am not sure but probably that too.
[21:19] <arraybolt3[m]> I would guess the dependencies would do things that way.