Tip: Updating packages that don't want to be updated on Debian

In my desktop I have a series of operating systems including Debian GNU/Linux. Having spent most of my time in FreeBSD running XFCE4 I figured I'd update my Debian Sid install whose last update as performed more that 6 months ago.

So after performing apt-get update, apt-get upgrade and apt-get dist-upgrade a few packages insisted on not wanting to be updated with APT screaming "The following packages have been kept back".

A quick jump to the Debian's own APT HOWTO at http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/index.en.html#contents presented some APT stuff that I were unaware.

So to know what's keeping a package from being updated you may use:

apt-get -o Debug::pkgProblemResolver=yes dist-upgrade

Running this command helped me out in figuring what to do, which involved removing and re-installing some packages in a specific order.

APT does have some interesting thing into it doesn't it?

;)