install only what is requested, without extra actions

[maroneze]

After running an opam update in the past, OPAM wanted to upgrade some of my packages, but I wanted to keep they unchanged, so I just refused to do an opam upgrade.

Now, I'm trying to install a specific package which has nothing to do with that one, but if I try to simply opam install mypackage, OPAM remembers some operations from the update, so it also wants to do them, as in the example below (in which I tried simply opam install frama-c-base):

The following actions will be performed:
  ∗  install   frama-c-base 20160501*     
  ↗  upgrade   coq          8.4.6 to 8.5.1
  ↻  recompile why3-base    0.87.0            [uses coq]
  ↻  recompile why3         0.87.0            [uses why3-base]

In this specific case, I can opam pin add coq -k version 8.4.6 and prevent the rest from happening, but in the general case it can be more complicated. Sometimes I just want to quickly install a specific package without doing anything else.

Ideally, a command-line option to opam install (such as --only) would be best, but otherwise, being able to erase OPAM's update cache might also work, if it's possible.

[AltGr]

Opam doesn't remember the updates, but it tries to keep packages related to your request up to date; however, this does not seem to be the case here.
Did you install an external solver, e.g. apt-get install aspcud ?
In general, a good way to prevent extra actions is to specify --criteria=paranoid (or --criteria=-changed,-notuptodate), to tell the solver to do the minimal changes that may satisfy your request. See this part of the doc for more details.

[maroneze]

Thank you, indeed it was the case (I'm using aspcud). --criteria=paranoid is exactly what I was looking for.