Bug#671496: /usr/bin/apt-ftparchive: undocumented and unusable

[Michal Suchanek <michal.suchanek@ruk.cuni.cz>]

Package: apt-utils
Version: 0.9.2
Severity: important
File: /usr/bin/apt-ftparchive

Hello,

As the format of apt archives has been changed silently and my
dpkg-scanpackages script generates archives that apt no longer
understands.

It's been suggested that I use apt-ftparchive instead since it works out
all the details.

However, the main problem remains:

THE APT REPOSITORY FORMAT IS NOT DOCUMENTED.

THE TOOL TO GENERATE IT IS NOT SUFFICIENTLY DOCUMENTED, EITHER.

The apt-ftparchive refuses to make any files based on filling out what
seems like important parts of the config file.

First off, it is not obvious how to fill out the config file.

Apparently it should have some values like Tree::Sections.

It far less obvious that these should be prefixed with APT::FTPArchive::
but some values explicitly mentioned in the man page are prefixed so.

It is not said what parts are required, if any.
Hopefully filling in what parts of the archive I want is sufficient.

Now I can presumably put some random values in the config file and
generate my repo, eh?

Except the syntax is:

apt-ftparchve generate config section...

It iss uspposed to be able to generate multiple sections so hopefully
the section is not required?
$ apt-ftparchive generate repo.conf 
Packages done, Starting contents.
Done. 0 B in 0 archives. Took 0s

Guess it is then?
The only section that the man page talks about is the archive section
specified in Sections...

$ apt-ftparchive generate repo.conf main
W: Selection main not found
E: No selections matched

So not that?
And the error talks about selection which the man page does not mention
at all. WTF is that?


And here is the content of repo.conf

APT::FTPArchive::Dir::ArchiveDir "/scratch/mesa-repo";
APT::FTPArchive::Dir::CacheDir "/scratch/mesa-repo";
APT::FTPArchive::Dir::FileListDir "/scratch/mesa-repo";
APT::FTPArchive::Tree::Sections "main";
APT::FTPArchive::Tree::Architectures "source i386 i486 amd64 x86_64";


I would really appreciate documentation describing the damn archives.

I can write a tool to generate them in a few minutes if I know what it
should generate.

Thanks

Michal


-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers stable
  APT policy: (900, 'stable'), (500, 'testing'), (410, 'unstable'), (200, 'experimental'), (111, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages apt-utils depends on:
ii  libapt-inst1.5  0.9.2
ii  libapt-pkg4.12  0.9.2
ii  libc6           2.13-30
ii  libdb5.1        5.1.29-1
ii  libgcc1         1:4.7.0-3
ii  libstdc++6      4.7.0-3

apt-utils recommends no packages.

Versions of packages apt-utils suggests:
ii  xz-utils  5.0.0-2

-- no debconf information