[Bug 1320267] [NEW] pkgProblemResolver logs cryptic, unactionable errors

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

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I've been having trouble upgrading Ubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 due to broken
dependencies reported by pkgProblemResolver. Researched all over the
internet for a definitive solution and could not find any. The most
commonly offered solutions are of drastic measures such as removing 3rd
party PPAs, blindly remove *possible* offending packages, manually
changing Ubuntu PPAs to the newer release channel, or even a clean
install from an ISO.

I could not for the life of me find any documentation that actually
explains what is being logged by pkgProblemResolver. For example take
the following block:

Broken libclutter-1.0-0:amd64 Breaks on libcogl12 [ amd64 ] < 1.14.0-2 > ( libs )
  Considering libcogl12:amd64 55 as a solution to libclutter-1.0-0:amd64 52
  MarkKeep libclutter-1.0-0 [ amd64 ] < 1.14.4-3 -> 1.16.4-0ubuntu2 > ( libs ) FU=0
  Holding Back libclutter-1.0-0:amd64 rather than change libcogl12:amd64

I'm a senior software engineer with 4+ years experience of using Ubuntu
as a dev environement, and this error log is complete gibberish to me. I
want to understand exactly how the dependency is broken in the first
place and how the resolution logic arrived at MarkKeep, so that I can
have a systematic approach for addressing these errors without resorting
to any of the earlier mentioned drastic measures.

** Affects: ubuntu-release-upgrader (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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pkgProblemResolver logs cryptic, unactionable errors
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1320267
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