Bug#596933: apt-file: files provided by alternatives cannot be found

[Stefan Fritsch]

On Wednesday 15 September 2010, you wrote:
> apt-file is not able to find files provided by the alternative
> system. I understand that those files are not exactly "a file in
> the package" but the package is reponsible for the file being
> there and therefore apt-file should find it.

apt-get depends on the Contents files that it downloads from the 
mirrors. The information about alternatives is simply not present in 
the Contents files, so there is no way for apt-file to display it. And 
since the alternatives are set up by the postinst scripts, they cannot 
be easily extracted from the .deb files. Therefore I don't think this 
bug is going to be fixed any time soon.

Cheers,
Stefan



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org

Bug#596933: apt-file: files provided by alternatives cannot be found

[Hendrik Jaeger]

Package: apt-file
Version: 2.1.5
Severity: normal

Hi,

apt-file is not able to find files provided by the alternative system. I 
understand that those files are not exactly "a file in the package" but the 
package is reponsible for the file being there and therefore apt-file should 
find it.
I stumbled upon that when searching for packages that provide /usr/bin/mail. 
Both apt-file and packages.debian.org only find the package 'mailutils' but 
IIRC there are at least 3 other packages which provide it via the alternatives 
system, bsd-mailx for example.
I was unsure of the priority of this bug. On the one hand i'd say it's a wish, 
on the other hand i think this tool is pretty useless if it's just going to 
ignore things like alternatives and who knows what else might come altogether 
and just displays a minor subset of relevant packages.

Thank you and best regards

Hendrik


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 5.0.6
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (1010, 'stable'), (10, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-hnj-0.1
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages apt-file depends on:
ii  curl 7.18.2-8lenny4  Get a file from an HTTP, HTTPS or 
ii  libapt-pkg-perl  0.1.22+b1   Perl interface to libapt-pkg
ii  libconfig-file-perl  1.42-1  Parses simple configuration files
ii  liblist-moreutils-perl   0.22-1+b1   Addition list functions not found 
ii  perl 5.10.0-19lenny2 Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  wget 1.11.4-2+lenny2 retrieves files from the web

Versions of packages apt-file recommends:
ii  menu  2.1.41 generates programs menu for all me

Versions of packages apt-file suggests:
ii  openssh-client1:5.1p1-5  secure shell client, an rlogin/rsh
ii  sudo  1.6.9p17-3 Provide limited super user privile

-- no debconf information



-- 
To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org
with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org