Dear Maintainer, dselect no longer shows package descriptions for the vast majority of packages, except for a one-line description. Presumably this is because the descriptions are absent from /var/lib/dpkg/available. A Description-md5 field has appeared in their place. Being able to grep through /var/lib/dpkg/available was very convenient. That's what I've always done whenever I would wonder if there was a Debian package that would help me solve any given problem. Having the full descriptions show up in dselect was also very useful. Where have the descriptions gone? How can I get them back into dselect and back into a local text file I can search? Thanks, AMC
Yes this has been changed recently in the archive to avoid duplicated contents from the server, more so now that we have multiarch duplicating tons of text if one enables several architectures. I had already in mind to add to my TODO list fixing this for the dselect methods. I'm guessing you are not using the apt method? Perhaps the ftp one? They are in a separate file that needs to be downloaded. For now, one workaround that you could do, while not having to change your current dselect method could be to install apt, do an apt-update and use the program sync-available from dctrl-tools. This should give you back your Descriptions, but you'll need to rember to not update from dselect, only upgrade from it. I'll look into fixing this for 1.16.4 or 1.16.5 for wheezy. thanks, guillem
[Sorry for the duplication, I forgot to reply-all.] Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> wrote: I am using the apt method. I don't remember ever configuring the access method in dselect, but I just now checked it, and it's apt. version. I then ran: apt-get update apt-get install dctrl-tools sync-available But ~32k of the ~42k packages in /var/lib/dpkg/available still have Description-md5: instead of actual descriptions. Any other ideas? :) Thanks! AMC
reassign 675748 apt thanks No problem. Because you are using apt as the dselect method this is not really required, and updating from inside dselect, or using «dselect update» should do the equivalent. Ok it seems then, this is an apt issue, as «apt-cache dumpavail|less» shows the same problem for me. Thus reassigning. thanks, guillem
In two years this bug seems to have gotten no attention from the apt maintainer. Maybe it would help to change the bug description to "apt-cache dumpavail omits full description, unlike apt-cache show". Thanks, AMC
Control: retitle -1 675748 apt-cache dumpavail omits full description, unlike apt-cache show Control: tag -1 confirmed Thanks for the suggestion. It does not seem easy to fix, as show uses entirely different code. Sorry that it took two years for us to answer, but we do not always respond to bug reports -- the team is very small, and there are many bug reports that are like 10 years old.
I am working on it at home. Wondering how I can submit it once I have a fix, though.
Where is the show command located? The dumpavail function is inside of apt-main/cmdline/aptcache.cc, so where is the show command?
Hi, You have multiple options ranging from "just" attaching a patch here in the BTS to making a merge request on Salsa: https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt (Make a fork, do your thing, commit to a branch and push that branch to your fork – the push will have an URI you can use to open a merge request). The dumpavail lives in /path/to/apt/cmdline/apt-cache.cc as it is available only in apt-cache. apt & apt-cache share the code for the show command (among other things), so it is in our private library in the file /path/to/apt/apt-private/private-show.cc. I am not quite sure what the semantics of dumpavail should be through. The bug asks for a restoration of a behaviour from a decade ago – so chances are for better or worse that others expect it to behave the way it does now considering the old-soon-to-be-new behaviour a bug. Who are the users of the command anyway? The bugreport has only a dselect user who likes to grep in the available file. Has the former even any users left now that it isn't really developed anymore for years and lacks support for multi-arch and co? The later at least should be equally or better served by using intended interfaces like 'apt search'. Deprecating and dropping dumpavail might be a bit too heretic, but I think before this is (intentionally) changed one way or the other someone (aka not me) should look into who are the (remaining) users and what they are expecting… the produced output reaches epic proportions already (on my system: 162 MB) and that won't be less if we add more… Best regards David Kalnischkies