There are few reasons why I believe upgrade does not bring in entirely new
packages by default when dependencies are changed.
1. The man page of apt-get says the following
upgrade
upgrade is used to install the newest versions of all packages
currently installed on the system from the sources enumerated in
/etc/apt/sources.list. Packages
currently installed with new versions available are retrieved and
upgraded; under no circumstances are currently installed packages removed, or
packages not already
installed retrieved and installed. New versions of currently
installed packages that cannot be upgraded without changing the install status
of another package will be
left at their current version. An update must be performed first so
that apt-get knows that new versions of packages are available.
dist-upgrade
dist-upgrade in addition to performing the function of upgrade, also
intelligently handles changing dependencies with new versions of packages;
apt-get has a "smart"
conflict resolution system, and it will attempt to upgrade the most
important packages at the expense of less important ones if necessary. The
dist-upgrade command may
therefore remove some packages. The /etc/apt/sources.list file
contains a list of locations from which to retrieve desired package files. See
also apt_preferences(5)
for a mechanism for overriding the general settings for individual
packages.
2. apt-get upgrade
keeps the package back, but all of the following succeed to upgrade the package
apt-get --with-new-pkgs upgrade
apt-get install libopenhpi-dev
apt-get dist-upgrade
(If the openhpi was already installed then there is no problem at all. Usually
it is always installed, that may be the reason this bug was not caught for
decades)
3.
https://debian-administration.org/article/69/Some_upgrades_show_packages_being_kept_back
https://askubuntu.com/questions/194651/why-use-apt-get-upgrade-instead-of-apt-get-dist-upgrade#226213
The above pages are old, but relevant. There are many more web pages that I do
not remember that also point to the same thing (spent many hours/days on it).
If the dependencies are changed and that needs new packages that are not
already installed, then do not bring them in. Keep those packages back.
So apt-get is little conservative when upgrade is specified in the command line
and leaves the decision to the user. But when user is little more clear it
brings in the new packages.
Regards
Mohan
