Bug#441904: dpkg: [update-alternatives]: Please add a machine-readable variant of --display
Package: dpkg
Version: 1.13.25
Severity: wishlist
We had to fix some older alternatives breakage from a package we took
over, and used update-alternatives --display to see whether we needed to
do anything. Unfortunately,
# LC_ALL=de_DE@euro update-alternatives --display xdvi.bin
xdvi.bin - Status ist auto.
Link verweist zur Zeit auf /usr/bin/xdvi-xaw.bin
/usr/bin/xdvi-xaw.bin - Priorität 30
Gegenwärtig »beste« Version ist /usr/bin/xdvi-xaw.bin.
#
which is impossible to parse (at least not if we think about all the
other languages).
This showed up in #438551, and we fixed it by prepending LC_ALL=C to our
call to u-a, but it would be nice if there was an interface to query
update-alternative's status with respect to a particular alternative.
Something which doesn't change with localization, and hardly with time
(and if it does, gets an entry in NEWS.Debian).
Regards and thanks, Frank
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
APT prefers stable
APT policy: (500, 'stable'), (99, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-5-686
Locale: LANG=de_DE@euro, LC_CTYPE=de_DE@euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)
Versions of packages dpkg depends on:
ii coreutils 5.97-5.3 The GNU core utilities
ii libc6 2.3.6.ds1-13etch2 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
dpkg recommends no packages.
-- no debconf information
--
Frank Küster
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)
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