Bug#183088: apt: no way mentioned to spit out apt's current configuration

[Dan Jacobson <jidanni@dman.ddts.net>]

Package: apt
Version: 0.5.4
Severity: wishlist
File: /usr/share/man/man5/apt.conf.5.gz

looking thru many apt man pages, we see we can set config variables
with -o, e.g.  apt-cache -o APT::Cache::AllVersions=no show gnucap

however, how are we to find out the current state of all these
variables? the man pages are mum. the best hint we get is on the
apt.conf man page where we are told to see
/usr/share/doc/apt/examples/configure-index.gz
but that is neither complete or the current state.

[Note, don't tell the user to read the source code please.]

the apt.conf man page casually mentions
  DEBUG OPTIONS
	 Most  of  the  options  in the debug section are not interesting to the

etc. but doesn't tell one how to spit out the current -o variables state.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux debian 2.4.20-k7 #1 Tue Jan 14 00:29:06 EST 2003 i686
Locale: LANG=zh_TW.Big5, LC_CTYPE=zh_TW.Big5

Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii  libc6                        2.3.1-10    GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2       1:2.95.4-15 The GNU stdc++ library

-- no debconf information