Is it safe to upgrade appstream if APT has kept it back?

Question

I ran apt upgrade the other day, and got this:

The following packages have been kept back:
  appstream

According to a related question somewhere on this site, appstream is safe to even remove.

How do I know if upgrading it is safe, and what will the upgrade actually change in my system? I'm assuming apt has kept it back for a reason, so I wanted to play safe before I run dist-upgrade.

Here's what changelog has to say:

appstream (0.10.6-1~ubuntu16.04.1) xenial-backports; urgency=medium

  * Backport to 16.04, with one change:
   - Lower the required Qt version to 5.4

 -- Iain Lane <iain@orangesquash.org.uk>  Wed, 01 Feb 2017 12:02:22 +0000

I'm assuming this won't brake anything?

apt-get -s dist-upgrade (even with sudo), as proposed by @muru, yielded nothing new, except the same old message that appstream has been kept back.

Here's the output of apt-get -s install appstream:

The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  gnome-software-common libgtkspell3-3-0 libsnapd-glib1 snapd-login-service
Use 'apt autoremove' to remove them.
The following packages will be REMOVED
  gnome-software ubuntu-software
The following packages will be upgraded:
  appstream

if it is held back, try apt-get -s dist-upgrade and see what it will do when upgrading. Probably an added dependency or something. — muru, Feb 02 '17 at 09:59
@muru - it only says that this package has been held back, nothing new. I even tries with sudo — Gallifreyan, Feb 02 '17 at 10:00
@muru - yep, same. I'll try apt install appstream, but I wanted to check here if it's safe. Is there an option to run install in a sort of "read-only" mode, to see what'll happen? — Gallifreyan, Feb 02 '17 at 10:03
with apt-get the option is -s, iirc. Not sure what option is for apt. Probably the same. — muru, Feb 02 '17 at 10:07

fkraiem · Accepted Answer · 2017-02-02T10:45:55.360

4

As per apt show appstream, version 0.10.16-1 of appstream breaks versions of gnome-software below 3.22.5-1, and the version of gnome-software in Xenial is 3.20.1. Hence, this version of appstream cannot be installed on a Xenial system together with gnome-software.

By the way, this seems like a good time to remember that backports are supposed to be installed manually on an as-needed basis. Although you can enable automatic installation of backports, you do so at your own risk, as it can cause issues like the one you are seeing now.

edited Feb 02 '17 at 10:45

answered Feb 02 '17 at 10:37

fkraiem

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Thanks for warning about backports! I disabled them and that appstream update disappeared. – Gallifreyan Feb 02 '17 at 12:45
1

@Gallifreyan If you disabled backports, you should look if you have any backport packages installed (e.g., apt list --installed | grep backports), and if so, revert them to the official version, so you don't have an unmaintained version installed. – fkraiem Feb 02 '17 at 12:49
I only got an error about APT not having a stable cli, so I guess I have no backports – Gallifreyan Feb 02 '17 at 12:55
Warnings are not errors, but yes. – fkraiem Feb 02 '17 at 13:02
I had the same situation as you today. I had libappstream4 from backports, it may have been installed today as well. – Organic Marble Feb 02 '17 at 14:41

Is it safe to upgrade appstream if APT has kept it back?

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