#1133364 apt should ignore 0 epoch when downloading or installing with a version specifier

Package:
apt
Source:
apt
Description:
commandline package manager
Submitter:
Jochen Sprickerhof
Date:
2026-04-12 14:01:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1133364#5
Date:
2026-04-12 13:59:38 UTC
From:
To:
Hi,

According to Debian policy 5.6.12. a zero epoch "may be omitted, in
which case zero is assumed." [0]. Currently this does not work:

$ apt download woff-tools=2009.10.04-2+1.3.1-2
Error: Version '2009.10.04-2+1.3.1-2' for 'woff-tools' was not found

# apt install woff-tools=2009.10.04-2+1.3.1-2
Error: Version '2009.10.04-2+1.3.1-2' for 'woff-tools' was not found

$ apt download woff-tools=0:2009.10.04-2+1.3.1-2
Get:1 https://deb.debian.org/debian unstable/main amd64 woff-tools all 0:2009.10.04-2+1.3.1-2 [3.024 B]

Can you please add support for this? This would fix the code in
debrebuild and allow to reproduce more packages on reproduce.d.n

Thanks!

Jochen


[0] https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#version