Hi. Currently "apt info" doesn't show all the fields describing a
package. In particular, the Multi-Arch fields are omitted, which makes
it challenging to debug issues involving those tags. Can we please add
this logic? I don't even see any other tools to do this, and I'm having
to 'apt source' the package and then look at the debian/control

Thanks!

I just realized that it also doesn't report the Architecture field, so
it's impossible to tell if a given package is Architecture:all or not.
This info is there in /var/lib/apt/lists, so it's available to the tool.

Can we please make "apt info PACKAGE" and "apt show PACKAGE" report
these fields?

Thanks

I just realized that it also doesn't report the Architecture field, so
it's impossible to tell if a given package is Architecture:all or not.
This info is there in /var/lib/apt/lists, so it's available to the tool.

Can we please make "apt info PACKAGE" and "apt show PACKAGE" report
these fields?

Thanks

Control: tag -1 wontfix

apt show only shows information relevant to end users, and Architecture
and Multi-Arch status are flexible implementation details only relevant
to package developers.

Thanks for replying. I get the rationale, but I'd like to find some kind
of better solution here.

DonKult just pointed out to me on IRC that I can get the output I want
with an "apt-cache show" instead of "apt show". Which is great. But it
exposes a different problem: "apt" and "apt-get","apt-cache" and friends
act VERY similarly, but have unclear differences. Before DonKult told me
about "apt-cache show" just now, I had assumed that "apt show" was a
synonym. And if I, a Debian user for decades and a DD am confused by
this, we can probably assume that almost everybody else is too.

This is probably a bigger discussion than this bug. There are ways to
improve this. For instance, you can have "apt show package" limit itself
to commonly-used fields (what it does today), with an extra note at the
bottom:

  N: Additional fields are displayed with -v

And "apt show -v package" would show everything (this is what "apt-cache
show" does?). "apt show" already has N: notes at the bottom, so this
would be consistent with the way it works today.

Adding more docs to the manpage wouldn't help: the tools take identical
options and produce 99% identical output. Anybody who sees that would
just assume the tools are the same.

Thanks