Bug#669880: apt-get should work better with partial mirrors

[Goswin von Brederlow <goswin-v-b@web.de>]

Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> writes:

> On Wed, 16 May 2012, David Kalnischkies wrote:
>
>> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 1:50 PM, Santiago Vila <sanvila@unex.es> wrote:
>> > After upgrading to apt 0.9.3, I have seen apt-get to fail when
>> > Translation-es was not available.
>> 
>> As Translations are important for many people to understand what
>> is going on/what they do as not everyone speaks english at all or fluently
>> i don't see the problem in at least notifying the user that he will not have
>> updated Translations and therefore in extreme cases will not know what
>> a package does (and is therefore okay to be installed/removed or not). [0]
>
> I don't see the problem in *notifying* the user either.
>
> The problem is that apt-get does a *lot* more than that: It *fails*:
>
> # apt-get update
> Des:1 file: wheezy InRelease [190 kB]
> Err file: wheezy/main Translation-es
>   
> Err file: wheezy/main Translation-es
>   
> Err file: wheezy/main Translation-es
>   
> Err file: wheezy/main Translation-es
>   Fichero no encontrado
> W: Imposible obtener file:/debian/dists/wheezy/main/i18n/Translation-es  Fichero no encontrado
>
> E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.
> # echo $?
> 100
>
>> This is not a fatal failure, APT will proceed to work with whatever it has
>> got, [...]
>
> Well, it depends. Scripts like this will fail:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> set -e
> apt-get update
> apt-get upgrade
>
>
> I do not remember that this happened in squeeze, and that's why I think
> apt-get's current behaviour is a step backwards.
>
>> [...]
>> So yes, this is a try at doing the right thing by default.
>
> Well, it is a little bit strange that "the right thing" includes
> failing gratuitously (i.e. in a way that could be avoided).
>
> It is so much difficult to show a warning message and returning 0
> as exit status by default?
>
> Do you really think you are going to make people unhappy by doing that?
> Why do you think so?

I think both have merits. So the best thing would be if there where an
option to say that outdated files are ok, esspecially for translations.

If I run "apt-get update" in a script to test if my local mirror has all
the right files then I certainly want to get an error return code if a
translation file is bad. Otherwise I probably won't mind.

Ignoring outdated translation files by default also seems like a
reasonable default. As long as strict checks can be enabled.

+1 on this idea.

MfG
        Goswin