Bug#752702: apt: please add a way to to retrieve the location of Packages/Sources files in /var/lib/apt/lists/
Hi,
Quoting Julian Andres Klode (2014-06-26 00:20:44)
> You can enable storing them in compressed form without uncompressing them
> first. APT transparently handles compressed files. We do not need to store
> that information anywhere, because of that. As said, the files in there are
> an implementation details and other packages using them are not checked for
> breakage if a need for a change arises.
my use case is botch (itp bug: #748102) which needs a pair of Packages and
Sources files. Since it is tedious to manually grab a pair from a mirror, I
thought it would make sense for the user to be able to use the local ones that
apt stored in /var/lib/apt/lists/. Botch transparently decompresses gzip, bz2
and xz so that would not be a problem (in contrast to apt it uses the file
magic instead of the filename extension).
If the files in /var/lib/apt/lists/ are indeed deemed just an implementation
detail then there should not be any API functions to retrieve their location
and associated information. It's of course your decision to make. With this
bugreport I just want to raise the issue that others may want to make use of
the Packages/Sources files apt already downloaded and that if apt wants to
allow that, then it needs some additional functions to retrieve more detailed
information about the Packages/Sources files it retrieves.
Thank you for your consideration!
cheers, josch
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