On Sat, 23 Nov 2002, Daniel Burrows wrote: > Package: libapt-pkg-dev > Version: 0.5.4 > Severity: wishlist > > Right now, apt's error API essentially tells the program > "an error occured somewhere, here's a human-readable description". This > is a nice feature, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to > distinguish particular errors. For instance, if a package list file is > missing, a frontend could automatically fetch new lists (or that > particular list) to fix the problem. > > Currently the only approach is a hack: parsing the error string > returned by apt. And of course i18n will break even that. If users could > access an integer or an untranslated string token that identified the > particular error condition, that would be great.
Probably the easiest way to fix this, is to extend GlobalError::Item, to also have an error code. Then, frontends can iterate the error list, and make more appropriate decisions.
