Bug 314449

Summary:	Apper wrongly states that additional packages are required while they are recommended only
Product:	[Unmaintained] apper	Reporter:	Dimitri Nüscheler <dimitri.nuescheler>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Daniel Nicoletti <dantti12>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	minor
Priority:	NOR
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Ubuntu
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Dimitri Nüscheler 2013-02-05 10:07:18 UTC

When I do updates on my Ubuntu 12.04 apper sometimes requests to install additional packages.

Some of them are probably are required, but some of them are not. But I do know they are recommended at least.
If they are recommended I would like to be able to discard them in that dialog. I don't want to disable  recommendations in general.
Sometimes there are recommended packages I like, and sometimes there are packages I completely dislike (such as ttf-mscorefonts-installer - I think it's triggered by a package from winehq, but it might also affect the packages from official Ubuntu repositories).

So some package maintainer put some ugly fonts together and is trying to smuggle them onto my system, so I'd be happy if I were able to play the guard here and get rid of it without declining some EULA and removing the package afterwards in a complicated way.

Maybe someone knows a workaround to ban specifically this package?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Have wine installed from winehq, have corefonts package not installed
2. update your system using apper
3. a dialog should apper which lists the corefonts package. You now either accept/decline the whole update, but cannot decline the corefonts package alone.
Actual Results:  
I am forced to either decline the whole update or to install corefonts as well, I can later decline the EULA, but it keeps installing some sort of placeholder part of the package, which needs to be removed after.

Expected Results:  
Have the system updated without corefonts being installed

Comment 1 Andrew Crouthamel 2018-11-09 01:05:27 UTC

Dear Bug Submitter,

This bug has been stagnant for a long time. Could you help us out and re-test if the bug is valid in the latest version? I am setting the status to NEEDSINFO pending your response, please change the Status back to REPORTED when you respond.

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!

Comment 2 Andrew Crouthamel 2018-11-20 04:07:58 UTC

Dear Bug Submitter,

This is a reminder that this bug has been stagnant for a long time. Could you help us out and re-test if the bug is valid in the latest version? This bug will be moved back to REPORTED Status for manual review later, which may take a while. If you are able to, please lend us a hand.

Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!

Comment 3 Justin Zobel 2023-01-02 02:04:16 UTC

Thank you for reporting this issue in KDE software. As it has been a while since this issue was reported, can we please ask you to see if you can reproduce the issue with a recent software version?

If you can reproduce the issue, please change the status to "REPORTED" when replying. Thank you!

Comment 4 Dimitri Nüscheler 2023-01-05 18:49:37 UTC

Hi Justin

Sorry for not following up earlier. I now tested Apper 1.0.0 on Debian Bookworm.
I uninstalled khelpcenter and tested if the installation of ktuberling using apper would result in the installation of khelpcenter (ktuberling recommends khelpcenter).
It does want to install khelpcenter and I can't click it away. The dialogue says "Zur Aufgabenerfüllung sind weitere Aktionen notwendig", so I think the behaviour has not changed.

However, i wouldn't call the semantic issue of calling something "notwendig" (necessary) that is not necessary, but only recommended a real bug. I would call it a feature request to implement the apt install command line option --no-install-recommends within apper (e.g. as a checkbox in said dialogue that is initialized with the default).

My stakes have somewhat decreased since I haven't used apper in a long time, so in my opinion the issue can also be closed.

Comment 5 Christoph Cullmann 2025-06-10 18:22:54 UTC

This project is unfortunately no longer maintained.

If a new maintainer wants to step up and take care, the project is archived here:

https://invent.kde.org/system/apper

You can just clone it in your private namespace on invent.kde.org and if you have started to work on it and fixed/implemented something get it reviewed and the project unarchived.

Sorry for the inconveniences.