Debian Unstable: Unable to Install deborphan

Debian Unstable: Unable to Install deborphan

Debian Unstable, also known as Sid, is the development distribution of Debian. It is the cutting edge of Debian and is continuously updated with the latest software packages. However, sometimes, you may encounter errors while trying to install packages in Debian Unstable. In this article, we will discuss one such error that occurs when trying to install the deborphan package in Debian Unstable.

Error: Package deborphan not available

When trying to install the deborphan package in Debian Unstable, you may encounter the following error:

$ sudo apt install deborphan
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package deborphan is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
E: Package 'deborphan' has no installation candidate

This error indicates that the deborphan package is not available in the Debian Unstable repositories. In the next section, we will discuss the possible reasons for this error and how to resolve it.

Possible Reasons for the Error

The deborphan package may not be available in the Debian Unstable repositories for several reasons, including:

• The package has been removed from the Debian Unstable repositories.
• The package has been renamed or replaced by another package.
• There is a problem with the Debian Unstable repositories, such as a missing or outdated package list.

Resolving the Error

To resolve the error and install the deborphan package in Debian Unstable, you can try the following steps:

1. Update the Debian Unstable repositories:

$ sudo apt update

2. Add the Debian Backports repository to your system:

$ sudo apt -t stretch-backports add contrib non-free

3. Install the deborphan package from the Debian Backports repository:

$ sudo apt -t stretch-backports install deborphan

If the above steps do not work, you can try building the deborphan package from source. To do this, you can follow the instructions provided in the deborphan GitHub repository:

4. Clone the deborphan GitHub repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/polymorf/deborphan.git

5. Install the required dependencies:

$ sudo apt install build-essential debhelper devscripts libparse-debcontrol-perl libdebconfclient-perl libdpkg-perl liblist-moreutils-perl libsort-versions-perl libterm-readkey-perl

6. Build the deborphan package:

$ cd deborphan
$ debuild -us -uc

7. Install the built deborphan package:

$ sudo dpkg -i ../deborphan_*.deb

In this article, we discussed the error that occurs when trying to install the deborphan package in Debian Unstable. We discussed the possible reasons for this error and how to resolve it. We also provided instructions for building the deborphan package from source.

References

• deborphan package in Debian Unstable
• Debian Backports
• deborphan GitHub repository