On Tue, Feb 12, 2008 at 10:02:03AM +1300, Chris Bannister wrote: > On Sun, Feb 10, 2008 at 03:36:53PM -0800, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > On Sun, Feb 10, 2008 at 11:38:11PM +0100, Gerard Robin wrote: > > > Hello, > > > A small comment about the command "apt-listbugs list". > > > By mistake I wrote "apt-listbugs list postix" instead "apt-listbugs list postfix" > > > and I got: > > > > > > Reading package fields... Done > > > Reading package status... Done > > > Retrieving bug reports... Done > > > Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done > > > > > > So I did "apt-get install postfix" ---------------8<------------------- > > > Reading package fields... Done > > > Reading package status... Done > > > Retrieving bug reports... Done > > > Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done > > > grave bugs of postfix (2.4.6-5 -> 2.5.1~rc1-1) <pending> > > > #311812 - postfix: syslog reconnection > > > Summary: > > > postfix(1 bug) > > > Are you sure you want to install/upgrade the above packages? [Y/n/?/...] > > > > > > I was surprised ... > > > > > > Why "apt-listbugs list postix" doesn't notify like "apt-get install postix": > > > > because its postFix not postix. > > Ummm, read it again Sam, er Andy. I'm pretty sure I understand. OP typed "apt-listbugs list postix" and no bugs were reported, but when OP types "apt-get install postfix" bugs were reported. In what way is this a problem? There are no bugs of the package postix. Of course there is no package postix, but that's a different issue. The question is unclear, but maybe OP is asking "why doesn't apt-listbugs report that a package doesn't exist in the manner that apt-get does?" But the strict answer is because there are no bugs of postix. I don't know that it's really the job of apt-listbugs to report on whether a package exists or not, merely to report if bugs exist for a particular package. But I don't know the intention of the author, so that's just a guess. According to man apt-listbugs, it retrieves bug reports from debian BTS. I don't know in what form apt-listbugs gets the info from BTS, but if you search for a non-existant package through the web frontend, you get similarly non-definitive results. try this: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=pkg&data=postix&archive=no&version=&dist=unstable you will see that it doesn't specifically report that there is no package "postix" only that there is no record of it. Maybe that's a problem with BTS in that it should give more explicit information. But at the same time, why does BTS care about every package? It should only care about those that actually have bugs (a very fine distinction, I know). I'm curious what BTS would report for the mythical "never had a bug report" package. And if apt-listbugs has to start being aware of whether a package exists or not, at what point does it begin to over-duplicate the package searching capabilities of the apt frontends? Also, I suppose there is a possibly faulty assumption that since apt-listbugs is designed to be run through an apt frontend then typos aren't really a concern. Obviously, at least one user calls it directly, so the devs might want to consider that. A
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