Bug#989234: apt-show-versions: shows abandoned apt lists

[Vincent Lefevre]

Hi,

On 2021-05-29 22:41:29 +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
> If the machine had an apt source removed for whatever reason (dist-upgraded
> from a past Debian release, a foreign architecture removed, etc), apt leaves
> the obsolete lists in /var/apt/lists/.  While I find purpose of that
> behaviour questionable, it's how things currently are, and even if this
> changes in the future, you may expect cruft from past apt versions.
> 
> apt-show-version shouldn't read those files.

This seems to be the same bug as 855428 (note that the user is not
using a foreign architecture, otherwise this would be signaled by
"apt-cache policy"; as he says, the archives "happen to be on the
same disk" -- perhaps a foreign architecture removed or some other
reason).

> With other bugs related to reading apt lists, perhaps you might want to
> run "apt-cache dumpavail" instead of reading them manually?

"apt-cache dumpavail" doesn't seem to list the different versions
(and the -a option doesn't work with it). This is necessary at least
for "apt-show-versions -a". It doesn't show the provenance either.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre  - Web: 
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: 
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

Bug#989234: apt-show-versions: shows abandoned apt lists

[Adam Borowski]

Package: apt-show-versions
Version: 0.22.12
Severity: normal

Hi!
If the machine had an apt source removed for whatever reason (dist-upgraded
from a past Debian release, a foreign architecture removed, etc), apt leaves
the obsolete lists in /var/apt/lists/.  While I find purpose of that
behaviour questionable, it's how things currently are, and even if this
changes in the future, you may expect cruft from past apt versions.

apt-show-version shouldn't read those files.

With other bugs related to reading apt lists, perhaps you might want to
run "apt-cache dumpavail" instead of reading them manually?


Meow!
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 11.0
  APT prefers testing-security
  APT policy: (500, 'testing-security'), (400, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-6-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads)
Locale: LANG=C.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: OpenRC (via /run/openrc), PID 1: init

Versions of packages apt-show-versions depends on:
ii  apt  2.2.3
ii  libapt-pkg-perl  0.1.39
ii  perl [libstorable-perl]  5.32.1-4

apt-show-versions recommends no packages.

apt-show-versions suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information