This specific case appears to have been fixed a while ago. I couldn't find the specific commit, but running this test case in 20.04, an error is printed in the terminal, but no exception is raised.
** Changed in: software-properties (Ubuntu) Status: Confirmed => Fix Released -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to software-properties in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/953424 Title: add-apt-repository does not handle malformed repo URL nicely Status in software-properties package in Ubuntu: Fix Released Bug description: add-apt-repository doesn't handle URLs nicely when they are malformed in a particular way. If you forget to add a repository name to a full- form ppa url it should fail gracefully but instead crashes: sudo add-apt-repository http://ppa.launchpad.net/username/ubuntu Exception in thread Thread-1: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/threading.py", line 552, in __bootstrap_inner self.run() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py", line 95, in run self.add_ppa_signing_key(self.ppa_path) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/softwareproperties/ppa.py", line 103, in add_ppa_signing_key owner_name, ppa_name, distro = ppa_path[1:].split('/') ValueError: need more than 2 values to unpack In this case I simply forgot to add the ppa name between the owner name and the distro. The 'correct' lines for the malformed URL are added to sources.list. It would be much nicer if add-apt-repository could handle this issue more gracefully. This is on Ubuntu 11.10, version 0.81.13.3. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/software-properties/+bug/953424/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp