Well, fits thing's first: I have Oracle's latest embedded Java SE on my N900, so I have absolutely no need for the old icedtea6 that's in the Maemo repos. That's why, on an unrelated note, when I wanted to install the microemulator package from extras-devel I did an apt-get -d and dpkg --force-all -i to install the microemulator package without the icedtea6 package it depended on. So far so good, and microemulator is running jar-files just fine, but I also need to get apt to permanently ignore the missing dependency, or I will get an "unmet dependencies" error every time I run apt-get update.

So... into /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/ I go, to make a new file (that I simply called zz-icedtea6 for this purpose) in which I put the line

But when I again run apt-get upgrade, I still get the unmet dependencies error! So, resigned to the fact that I don't know as much as I thought, I humbly ask: Where did I go wrong? I even tried ignoring "microemulator" too, but no luck!

1. You could try to extract the "microemulator"-package instead of installation. This does circumvent the package management system, but makes a usable executive.

2. You could extract the package, edit the /DEBIAN/control file. Change the icedtea6 package to the propriaty ****, you installed. Repack to deb-package again and install it.

3. You could try pinning the package negative like this in /etc/apt/preferences

Well, I'm looking for a permanent solution that will ignore an icedtea6 dependency for any and all packages, so only the third alternative fits the bill. I created /etc/apt/preferences since it didn't exist, and gave it the content you suggested, but I'm still getting a dependency error.

Reading the Debian Apt manual, it would seem this line in apt.conf would ignore ALL missing dependencies, but it does nothing either:

Maybe just install blank icedtea6 package.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/103797238/i...rmel_blank.deb

Do I really have to resort to installing dummy packages? Why not then just edit /var/lib/dpkg/status to say icedtea6 is already installed?

You could try if the 'alternatives' system does give you an option for java stuff