Bug#944968: popularity-contest: Program accesses internal dpkg database

[Bill Allombert <ballombe@debian.org>]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2021 at 11:02:52PM +0200, Guillem Jover wrote:
> On Sat, 2020-12-12 at 15:33:47 +0100, Bill Allombert wrote:
> > On Thu, Nov 28, 2019 at 08:55:00PM +0000, Niels Thykier wrote:
> > > While it would take a bit of restructuring / refactoring, I think it
> > > would be possible to use a single dpkg-query for everything and still be
> > > able to process the data in a "streaming" fashion.
> > > 
> > > As an example, using the following:
> > > 
> > >   dpkg-query --show \
> > >     --showformat='${status} ${package}\n${db-fsys:Files}\n\n'
> 
> > I am trying to implement this to see how well this perform.
> > Unfortunately it seems it does not provide a stable interface across release,
> > but maybe I am doing something wrong.
> > 
> > dpkg-query --show --showformat='${status} ${package}\n${db-fsys:Files}\n\n'|head -n1
> > 
> > On buster:
> > deinstall ok config-files 0ad
> > 
> > On sid:
> > (Lecture de la base de données... 134812 fichiers et répertoires déjà
> > installés.)
> 
> For others following along at home (and myself), this was filed as #977240,
> and fixed in dpkg 1.20.6. (Was asked about a missing reply here, which I
> though I was owing after fixing it, then found about the bug. :)

Sorry about not following here but then the freeze was coming and I
stopped working on this. Thanks for bringing this up now that the
release is close.

So the main point is: is it a stable interface for which compatibility
will be provided in the future ?

Cheers,
-- 
Bill. <ballombe@debian.org>

Imagine a large red swirl here.