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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 <[email protected]>  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
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6
  • 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 2, 2017 at 9:59
  • @muru - it only says that this package has been held back, nothing new. I even tries with sudo
    – Gallifreyan
    Feb 2, 2017 at 10:00
  • Even with apt-get dist-upgrade?
    – muru
    Feb 2, 2017 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 2, 2017 at 10:03
  • with apt-get the option is -s, iirc. Not sure what option is for apt. Probably the same.
    – muru
    Feb 2, 2017 at 10:07

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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.

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5
  • Thanks for warning about backports! I disabled them and that appstream update disappeared.
    – Gallifreyan
    Feb 2, 2017 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 2, 2017 at 12:49
  • I only got an error about APT not having a stable cli, so I guess I have no backports
    – Gallifreyan
    Feb 2, 2017 at 12:55
  • Warnings are not errors, but yes.
    – fkraiem
    Feb 2, 2017 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 2, 2017 at 14:41

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