Bug#834073: [Aptitude-devel] Bug#834073: aptitude search gives less results than apt-cache search

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: severity -1 wishlist
Control: tags -1 + wontfix


(It's unlikely that we change this in aptitude or add new config options
to that effect, so setting the bug priority and tags accordingly... but
read on)


Hi,

2016-08-13 15:10 shirish शिरीष:

in-line :-

On 11/08/2016, Axel Beckert  wrote:

Hi shirish,


Hi Axel,




So unless you want to change aptitude's default, I don't see any bug
here and would like to close this bug report again.


Could you tell/share/remind why does aptitude do it differently than
apt-cache or axi-cache .  I do find using apt-cache or axi-cache
search to be better in this aspect rather than plain aptitude :(

I have always been telling friends that aptitude is better than other
package managers, more powerful and yet pretty convenient.

Is there some reason that we do not use the description wildcard when
searching for packages. ? And I know this will be a big change and
probably not welcomed by most/many sys-admins so not saying that.

If I were to change the behavior in my aptitude installation, where or
how I could do the change so the above behavior that you shared could
be simulated.

I forgot to share that I had seen both man apt.conf and the examples
given at /usr/share/doc/examples and specifically the
configure-index.gz but didn't become any wiser.

I would like to make changes and keep it at /etc/apt/apt.conf so when
the searches happen, it happens both for name as well as description .
Even doing it ~/.aptitude is ok but didn't see any possibilities in
either the aptitude or apt-conf man page.

Look forward to knowing more.


As Axel said, a more-or-less equivalent in bash would be:

 aptitude search {~d,~n}marathi

It's easy to add a function or an alias in bash to get the results:

 $ function aptitude_enhanced_search() { aptitude search {~d,~n}$1; }

 $ aptitude_enhanced_search marathi
 p   aspell-mr  - Marathi (mr) dictionary for GNU aspell
 p   festival-mr- festival text to speech synthesizer for Marathi 
language
 p   festvox-mr-nsk - Marathi male speaker for festival
 p   firefox-esr-l10n-mr- Marathi language package for Firefox ESR
 p   firefox-l10n-mr- Marathi language package for Firefox
 p   fonts-deva-extra   - Free fonts for Devanagari script
 i   fonts-gargi- OpenType Devanagari font
 p   fonts-lohit-deva   - Lohit TrueType font for Devanagari script
 p   fonts-nakula   - Free Unicode compliant Devanagari font
 p   fonts-sahadeva - Free Unicode compliant Devanagari font
 p   fonts-samyak-deva  - Samyak TrueType font for Devanagari script
 p   fonts-sarai- truetype font for devanagari script
 p   gcompris-sound-mr  - Indian Marathi sound files for GCompris
 p   hyphen-mr  - Marathi hyphenation patterns for LibreOffice
 p   iceweasel-l10n-mr  - Marathi language package for Iceweasel - 
Transitional package
 p   iok- Indic Onscreen Keyboard
 p   iok:i386   - Indic Onscreen Keyboard
 p   kde-l10n-mr- Marathi (mr) localization files for KDE
 p   libreoffice-l10n-mr- office productivity suite -- Marathi language 
package
 p   task-marathi   - Marathi environment
 p   task-marathi-desktop   - Marathi desktop
 p   tesseract-ocr-mar  - tesseract-ocr language files for Marathi


--
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo 

Bug#834073: [Aptitude-devel] Bug#834073: aptitude search gives less results than apt-cache search

[shirish शिरीष]

in-line :-

On 11/08/2016, Axel Beckert  wrote:
> Hi shirish,

Hi Axel,



> So unless you want to change aptitude's default, I don't see any bug
> here and would like to close this bug report again.

Could you tell/share/remind why does aptitude do it differently than
apt-cache or axi-cache .  I do find using apt-cache or axi-cache
search to be better in this aspect rather than plain aptitude :(

I have always been telling friends that aptitude is better than other
package managers, more powerful and yet pretty convenient.

Is there some reason that we do not use the description wildcard when
searching for packages. ? And I know this will be a big change and
probably not welcomed by most/many sys-admins so not saying that.

If I were to change the behavior in my aptitude installation, where or
how I could do the change so the above behavior that you shared could
be simulated.

I forgot to share that I had seen both man apt.conf and the examples
given at /usr/share/doc/examples and specifically the
configure-index.gz but didn't become any wiser.

I would like to make changes and keep it at /etc/apt/apt.conf so when
the searches happen, it happens both for name as well as description .
Even doing it ~/.aptitude is ok but didn't see any possibilities in
either the aptitude or apt-conf man page.

Look forward to knowing more.

>   Regards, Axel
> --
>  ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/
> : :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
> `. `'   |  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
>   `-|  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE
>

-- 
  Regards,
  Shirish Agarwal  शिरीष अग्रवाल
  My quotes in this email licensed under CC 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/
http://flossexperiences.wordpress.com
EB80 462B 08E1 A0DE A73A  2C2F 9F3D C7A4 E1C4 D2D8

Bug#834073: [Aptitude-devel] Bug#834073: aptitude search gives less results than apt-cache search

[Axel Beckert]

Hi shirish,

shirish शिरीष wrote:
> As shared above, aptitude search gives far less results than
> apt-cache search.

Yes. It does so for ages.

> For instance -
>
> [$] aptitude search marathi
>
> p   task-marathi-
> Marathi environment
> p   task-marathi-desktop-
> Marathi desktop
>
> Now let's try the same using either apt-cache or axi-cache
>
> [$] apt-cache search marathi
>  [0:07:03]
> aspell-mr - Marathi (mr) dictionary for GNU aspell
> festival-mr - festival text to speech synthesizer for Marathi language
[...]

"apt-cache search" by default searches package name _and_ description.

"aptitude search" by default searches only in packages names -- which
also can be seen nicely in your examples.

See the documentation at e.g.
http://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/ch02s04s05.html#searchTermReferenceList

If you want the same result as with apt-cache use e.g. this command:

→ aptitude search "~dmarathi" "~nmarathi"
p   aspell-mr  - Marathi (mr) dictionary for GNU aspell
p   festival-mr- festival text to speech synthesizer for 
Marathi language
p   festvox-mr-nsk - Marathi male speaker for festival
p   firefox-esr-l10n-mr- Marathi language package for Firefox ESR
p   firefox-l10n-mr- Marathi language package for Firefox
p   fonts-deva-extra   - Free fonts for Devanagari script
p   fonts-gargi- OpenType Devanagari font
p   fonts-lohit-deva   - Lohit TrueType font for Devanagari script
p   fonts-nakula   - Free Unicode compliant Devanagari font
p   fonts-sahadeva - Free Unicode compliant Devanagari font
p   fonts-samyak-deva  - Samyak TrueType font for Devanagari script
p   fonts-sarai- truetype font for devanagari script
p   gcompris-sound-mr  - Indian Marathi sound files for GCompris
p   hyphen-mr  - Marathi hyphenation patterns for 
LibreOffice
p   iceweasel-l10n-mr  - Marathi language package for Iceweasel - 
Transitional package
p   iok- Indic Onscreen Keyboard
p   iok:i386   - Indic Onscreen Keyboard
p   kde-l10n-mr- Marathi (mr) localization files for KDE
p   libreoffice-l10n-mr- office productivity suite -- Marathi 
language package
p   task-marathi   - Marathi environment
p   task-marathi-desktop   - Marathi desktop
p   tesseract-ocr-mar  - tesseract-ocr language files for Marathi

In the opposite direction, you'll get the same result as "aptitude
search" with "apt-cache search -n":

→ apt-cache search -n marathi
task-marathi - Marathi environment
task-marathi-desktop - Marathi desktop

So unless you want to change aptitude's default, I don't see any bug
here and would like to close this bug report again.

Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert , http://people.debian.org/~abe/
: :' :  |  Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin
`. `'   |  4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329  6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5
  `-|  1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486  202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE