On Wed, Nov 05, 2025 at 11:34:08AM -0500, Haines Brown via Dng wrote:
>
> I've done this many times before, but instead of the routine I
> expected I get a series of lines like this:
>
> Resolving dependencies...
> open: 85586; closed: 99212; defer: 119; conflict: 233
>
> These keep repeating with the number for open and closed
> incrementing. After a long time I tried this:
>
> # aptitude --full-resolver -y

This is a "feature" of aptitude: I have occasionally hit this exploding
complexity. It is hopeless. Just use apt instead.

Aptitude is really usefull, but it has this possibility to disappear
down a black hole of dependencies from which it can never(?) excape.
Clean up with apt, and then aptitude can become useful again. Aptitude
can spot redundant packages that apt misses, so both are useful.

ael