#71333 dpkg --merge-avail ignores architecture while reading Packages

Package:
dpkg
Source:
dpkg
Description:
Debian package management system
Submitter:
Daniel Mueller
Date:
2026-09-09 01:53:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#71333#5
Date:
2000-09-11 05:47:18 UTC
From:
To:
When merging in Packages files with 'dpkg --merge-avail', dpkg
apparently doesn't care about the architecture of the package entries
it reads. If there is more than one entry for the same package (each
with a different architecture) it only keeps one of them, and this one
needn't be the right one.

I got a lot of dependency problems in dselect after merging the
Packages file from potato-proposed-updates, because there are a lot of
entries for traceroute and dpkg chose to keep the one for alpha
architecure instead of i386. That, in turn, depends on libc6.1 which
is only available for alpha and conflicts with libc6 ...

Regards, Daniel
#71333#12
Date:
2026-09-09 01:50:09 UTC
From:
To:
Hi!
got implemented when multiarch support got merged. As an example
session:

,---
# cat Packages.amd64
Package: test-arch-duped
Version: 1.0
Architecture: amd64
Maintainer: Some One <some@example.org>
Description: test package with duped arch entries
# cat Packages.alpha
Package: test-arch-duped
Version: 2.0
Architecture: alpha
Maintainer: Some One <some@example.org>
Description: test package with duped arch entries
# dpkg --clear-avail
# dpkg --merge-avail Packages.amd64
Updating available packages information from Packages.amd64.
Information about 1 package was updated.
# dpkg --merge-avail Packages.alpha
Updating available packages information from Packages.alpha.
Information about 1 package was updated.
# dpkg-query -p
Package: test-arch-duped
Maintainer: Some One <some@example.org>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 1.0
Description: test package with duped arch entries

Package: test-arch-duped
Maintainer: Some One <some@example.org>
Architecture: alpha
Version: 2.0
Description: test package with duped arch entries

`---

Thus closing.

Thanks,
Guillem