Subject: bug#59005: 29.0.50; Package transient installed as dependency despite it being built-in

From: Eric Abrahamsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 12 Feb 2023 11:48:21 -0800

Michael Heerdegen <[email-masked]> writes:

> Jonas Bernoulli <[email-masked]> writes:
>
>> > I ask because "transient" rings a bell (it is also a package that is
>> > often related to trouble in my scenario).
>>
>> What kind of trouble?  Packaging trouble I assume.
>
> Yes: when updating packages from the package manager, dependencies are
> sometimes in effect deleted instead of updated.  This is often
> "transient", but that could be coincidental (because it gets regular
> updates maybe).
>
> No one seems to care about this problem so far.  Looking at package.el I
> don't see a recent change that looks like it could have such an effect.
> But since I did not get any help so far, I can only ask around...

I have seen this, also with transient, and more recently with "compat",
and found it very annoying. I think I solved it by explicitly
uninstalling transient and everything that depended on it, and then
re-installing -- I haven't seen the problem since. Come to think of it
compat was also a Magit dependency, so I wonder if something about
Magit's package definition changed? Anyway I haven't seen this for a
while, so I forgot about it.