Bug#222701: apt-utils: apt-extracttemplates fails to parse debs created/modified by ar

[Goswin von Brederlow <brederlo@informatik.uni-tuebingen.de>]

Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@debian.org> writes:

> On Tue, 2 Dec 2003, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
> 
> > As a sidenote, the reason why this is important is that debsigs
> > modifies deb archives through ar and ar will add the trailing '/' to
> > all filenames. The same problem arises when deb files are build
> > manually with ar.
> 
> This has been discussed in the past - since software exists that does not
> support the GNU ar format for debs debsigs must not use that format. It
> seems to me it has been years since this last came up so I'm surprised
> nobody has fixed debsig yet.

Not just you. But the same applies to apt-utils.

> apt-utils follows the historical dpkg behavior which only permits one of
> the other ar formats. dpkg has since been changed, but it is still not a
> good idea to use this new format.

Aparently it was chnaged between slink and woody. That makes it ancient.

> You should also know that apt-utils is the deb scanner that drives the ftp
> archive and as such is easially as authoritative as to the format as dpkg.

Its allways a bad idea to have two sources doing the same. I whish
dpkg2 with its libdpkg would come around.

MfG
        Goswin