[Bug 1446552] Re: Unattended upgrades handles new dependencies inconsistently

[Mathew Hodson]

** No longer affects: unattended-upgrades (Ubuntu Wily)

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Title:
  Unattended upgrades handles new dependencies inconsistently

Status in unattended-upgrades package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  When an installed package adds a dependency that is not yet installed
  on the system, this sometimes causes the package to not be installed,
  depending on the origin containing the original candidate version.

  I believe that the problem is in /usr/bin/unattended-upgrade, line
  102. Here a check is performed to prevent downgrades. However, as a
  side effect it also prevents adjusting the candidate version for
  packages that have not yet been installed (because pkg.is_upgradable
  is False for packages that have not been installed).

  This makes updating private packages using unattended-upgrades
  troublesome, especially when new dependencies have been added.
  Currently it requires repackaging the dependencies with a slightly
  higher version number than what is in the main repository, and then
  hosting them on the private repository, which is time consuming and
  error-prone. With the included patch, it is sufficient to just host
  the same version on the private repository.

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