Tell PKGget some default-* packages already installed

I installed Bluefish, which is a text editor whose main focus is HTML coding. PKGget reported that two dependencies are missing; 'default-dbus-system-bus' and 'default-logind'.

The thing is though, the dependencies are already installed. The problem is that a package may have alternative names. For example:

# apt info libpam-elogind
Package: libpam-elogind
Version: 9:999.0
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Maintainer: Equivs Dummy Package Generator <root@>
Installed-Size: 9,216 B
Provides: default-logind, libpam-systemd, logind
Download-Size: unknown
APT-Manual-Installed: no
APT-Sources: /var/lib/dpkg/status
Description: dummy deb for libpam-elogind

...that package is a dummy package, created by the "equivs" mechanism, as I don't want the real libpam-elogind installed. Nor 'elogind' for that matter.

The problem that arises is PKGget sees that Bluefish requires those seemingly-missing dependencies. Nor does APT have a mechanism for finding them (not that I can determine anyway), despite misinformation provided by Google's Generative AI.

What we have to do is manually tell PKGget that they are already installed. That is what the PKG_NAME_IGNORE variable in /root/.packages/PKGS_MANAGEMENT is for. I have inserted this:

#20250917 'dbus' provides 'default-dbus-system-bus',
# 'libpam-elogind' provides 'default-logind', 'libpam-systemd', 'logind'
# so ignore if show up as missing deps...
PKG_NAME_IGNORE="default-dbus-system-bus default-logind libpam-systemd logind ${PKG_NAME_IGNORE}"

If you hit this problem, a mysterious missing dependency reported by PKGget, one thing to do is to go here:

https://packages.debian.org/trixie/virtual/

...from that, if you find that the real package is already installed (run "apt info <pkg>"), let me know and I'll add it to the PKG_NAME_IGNORE variable.   

Tags: easy