After initially merging the patch, it has been reverted due to complications with file ownership and requirements of the XDG basedir specification.
Briefly, the basedir specification states that non-existent directories are to be created and with initial mode 0700. The path used can come from $HOME, $XDG_CACHE_HOME, or a default. Not an issue for programs run under the effective id of the logged in user. But that is not how aptitude is always run. Different means of gaining root privileges do filter any of these environment variables, and it is not clear whether the user has intentionally or not set any of them, nor which user is supposed to own the cache directories once created. Example: $ export XDG_CACHE_HOME=/usercache/foo # perhaps set on login ... $ su ... $ aptitude Counter example: $ su ... $ export XDG_CACHE_HOME=/rootcache $ aptitude su _may_ have cleared XDG_CACHE_HOME or may not have, depending on system configuration. It is not obvious to aptitude whether the user is expecting this to have been passed to aptitude, nor which user should have ownership of the stated path if aptitude has to create it. Other scenarios introduce similar ambiguity. The change is reverted until a simple mechanism can be decided upon, perhaps similar to what happens with ~/.aptitude/config (only create if the path is within the real users HOME, but even this has some problems). Regards Daniel Hartwig -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org