Bug#1020488: libffi8: Fail to install

[Christian Marillat]

Package: libffi8
Version: 3.4.3-1
Severity: serious

Dear Maintainer,

Would be nice to know why this package provides libffi8ubuntu1 ?

,----
| dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of libffi8:amd64:
| libffi8:i386 (3.4.3-1) breaks libffi8ubuntu1 and is unpacked but not configured.
| libffi8:amd64 (3.4.3-1) provides libffi8ubuntu1.
|
| dpkg: error processing package libffi8:amd64 (--configure):
| dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
| Errors were encountered while processing:
| libffi8:amd64
`----

Christian


-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
APT prefers buildd-unstable
APT policy: (500, 'buildd-unstable'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.19.10 (SMP w/24 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages libffi8 depends on:
ii libc6 2.34-8

libffi8 recommends no packages.

libffi8 suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information

[Erik Faye-Lund]

This issue affected me as well, and thanks a lot for a quick work-
around.

Just in case anyone else is having the additional problems that I had,
where apt update wanted to reinstall the unmodified after I applied the
workaround above: I needed to do the following in addition:

dpkg --configure -a && apt-mark hold libffi8

This finishes the terminated configuration, and prevents apt from
trying to use the repository version. In addition, I decided to
subscribe to this ticket so I'll (hopefully) remember to unmark that
package once the issue has been fixed.

Maybe this is obvious to others, but it wasn't to me. So perhaps this
note might be useful to someone else.