from what i can gather, its app managers silly default reaction to any kind of install failure from missing dependencies.

remember, if one try to install a package via a downloaded deb, app manager will not attempt to look up dependencies...

what we are looking at is a multi-faceted problem.

1. throwing everything into extras-devel results in less eyes for testing as people stay away because they risk updating something that works with something that do not, and thats important to them. as there is no way to say, in app manager, that this is a app that one do not want to upgrade from extras-devel, while another is, one get to issue 2.

2. because of issue 1, and people being lazy bastards that dont want to take the time to apply for access to extras-devel (or wathever), we have non-repo debs floating around of alpha/beta grade software that people want to try out. but because the managment have in their eternal wisdom decided that its best to have everything on extras(-devel), especially with source code, they have made the manual install of debs via app manager near worthless, by having it not check and take care of dependencies.

3. app manager giving errors that have nothing to do with the underlying cause of the error, resulting in confused newbies making confusing posts on forums...

sure, the intention of the policy may be good, but right now someone needs to slap app manager silly and give people a bit more info, and a lot more fine grained control. and no, having to dive into apt-get config files do not help, if so one could just scrap app manager fully and point everyone to apt-get and dpkg...