Never-MarkAuto-Sections not working

Similar incorrect behavior is also seen with Ubuntu 16.04 and Ubuntu 17.04.

Ubuntu 16.04 with apt version 1.2.25

# apt-get --purge autoremove ubuntu-standard
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  accountsservice* apt-transport-https* bind9-host* busybox-static* ca-certificates* command-not-found* command-not-found-data* cpio* cron* distro-info-data* dmidecode*
  dnsutils* friendly-recovery* ftp* fuse* geoip-database* gettext-base* ...

Ubuntu 17.04 with apt version 1.4.6~17.04.1

# apt-get --purge autoremove ubuntu-standard
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  accountsservice* apparmor* apt-transport-https* bind9-host* busybox-static* ca-certificates* command-not-found* command-not-found-data* cpio* cron* dbus* dh-python*
  distro-info-data* dmidecode* dnsutils* friendly-recovery* ftp* fuse* geoip-database* gettext-base* gir1.2-glib-2.0*...

Using the test in debian bug 793360.

$ sudo apt-mark showmanual >before
$ sudo apt-get -o Debug::pkgDepCache::AutoInstall=true install ubuntu-standard
[...]
$ sudo apt-mark showmanual >after
$ diff -u before after
--- before 2017-10-04 11:36:41.967980781 -0700
+++ after 2017-10-04 11:37:47.615979019 -0700
@@ -119,6 +119,7 @@
 tar
 tzdata
 ubuntu-keyring
+ubuntu-standard
 util-linux
 vim
 xz-utils

Only ubuntu-standard was marked as manually installed and none of its dependencies were. ubuntu-standard has a section of "metapackages" and some of my apt-config follows:

# apt-config dump | grep Sections
APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections "";
APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections:: "metapackages";
APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections:: "contrib/metapackages";
APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections:: "non-free/metapackages";
APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections:: "restricted/metapackages";
APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections:: "universe/metapackages";
APT::Never-MarkAuto-Sections:: "multiverse/metapackages";
APT::Move-Autobit-Sections "";
APT::Move-Autobit-Sections:: "oldlibs";
APT::Move-Autobit-Sections:: "contrib/oldlibs";
APT::Move-Autobit-Sections:: "non-free/oldlibs";
APT::Move-Autobit-Sections:: "restricted/oldlibs";
APT::Move-Autobit-Sections:: "universe/oldlibs";
APT::Move-Autobit-Sections:: "multiverse/oldlibs";

I've also confirmed this incorrect behavior with debian/sid and apt 1.5.

$ sudo apt-mark showmanual >before
$ sudo apt-get -o Debug::pkgDepCache::AutoInstall=true install ros-desktop
[...]
$ sudo apt-mark showmanual >after
root@golden-raccoon:~# diff -u before after
--- before 2017-10-04 19:16:05.171917363 +0000
+++ after 2017-10-04 19:18:06.323914112 +0000
@@ -116,6 +116,7 @@
 passwd
 perl-base
 procps
+ros-desktop
 sed
 sensible-utils
 systemd

The behavior as specified in the bug report and the comments is intended.

When installing a package in never mark auto, it is not marked as auto. On removal, dependencies of it will be

(1) marked as manually if the package was removed as a result of a conflict or something
(2) kept as automatic if the package was removed explicitly

The old implementation that just marked all stuff as manual led to the problem that installing a meta package and explicitly removing it did not remove any dependencies.

Conflict or something = If the meta package cannot be kept installed because a dependency broke, APT will mark the remaining dependencies as manually installed when removing the meta package.

But if you remove the meta package explicitly, you usually want to remove the dependencies of it as well.

See this commit for the implementation and the reasoning:

https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/apt/apt.git/commit/?h=7c2cc4a7bc999c8e07fba607354bfaa3b09118f9