Bug#674147: apt: LANG=C apt-cache policy is very slow

[David Kalnischkies <kalnischkies+debian@gmail.com>]

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 1:15 PM, Francois Gouget <fgouget@free.fr> wrote:
> Here is how to reproduce the problem:
>
> $ LANG=C time apt-cache policy >/dev/null
> 1.76user 0.05system 0:01.82elapsed 99%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 137200maxresident)k
> 0inputs+0outputs (0major+11677minor)pagefaults 0swaps
>
> $ LANG=fr_FR.UTF8 time apt-cache policy >/dev/null
> 0.03user 0.00system 0:00.04elapsed 86%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 63584maxresident)k
> 0inputs+0outputs (0major+5982minor)pagefaults 0swaps
>
> This makes lsb_release very slow because it runs apt-cache with LANG=C, which
> in turn makes vmrun, a VMware tool, very slow.

Thanks for your report!

I think it is this fixed-in-unstable issue:

apt (0.9.4) unstable; urgency=low
[…]
  * apt-pkg/aptconfiguration.cc:
      - longcode Translation files are saved with encoded underscore,
        so make sure to pick these files up as well for Acquire::Languages
[…]
 -- Michael Vogt <mvo@debian.org>  Mon, 21 May 2012 12:29:05 +0200


Can you test this (or: better 0.9.5) version from unstable maybe?
(you need to upgrade the libapt-pkg4.12 package)

Otherwise the output of the two commands with the debug option
 -o Debug::pkgCacheGen=1
could be helpful to know which file isn't picked up, as in
theory what you suggested is already in action.


Best regards

David Kalnischkies