Bug#193934: dselect: error while merging information after "update"

[Matthew Swift <swift@alum.mit.edu>]

Package: dselect
Version: 1.10.10
Severity: normal

I am getting the following error recently.  I don't get the same error with
apt-get.

I don't know about whatever system might check for correctness when a package
is uploaded by a developer or when a package drops into testing from unstable.
If the problem is there instead of in dselect, I wouldn't know how to report it
anyway.  The same error occurs, however, when I change my /etc/apt/sources.list
so that I am downloading any other set of packages, including stable/main,
testing/non-free, etc.  In other words, I tried to see whether I could isolate
the problem in one of the downloaded package files, but I get the error with
all the package files I have tried.  My conclusion is that dselect itself has a
problem.  I do not know whether this problem appeared with the upgrade to
version 1.10.10, but the timing is about right.

Shell transcript:

    [beth] incoming# apt-get update
    Hit http://http.us.debian.org testing/main Packages
    Hit http://http.us.debian.org testing/main Release
    Reading Package Lists... Done
    [beth] incoming# dselect update
    Hit http://http.us.debian.org testing/main Packages
    Hit http://http.us.debian.org testing/main Release
    Reading Package Lists... Done
    Merging Available information
    E: Internal Error, Unable to parse a package record

    update available list script returned error exit status 100.
    Press <enter> to continue.

    [beth] incoming#


I have tried deleting all the files (except for file "lock" and empty subdir
"partial") in /var/lib/apt/lists, but the error persists.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux beth 2.4.20 #1 Wed Feb 26 02:14:42 EST 2003 i686
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8

Versions of packages dselect depends on:
ii  libc6                     2.3.1-17       GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libgcc1                   1:3.3-0pre9    GCC support library
ii  libncurses5               5.3.20030510-1 Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libstdc++5                1:3.3-0pre9    The GNU Standard C++ Library v3

-- no debconf information