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Bug#845280: apt: useless path given in failed install messages



On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 06:50:34AM +0100, Adam Borowski wrote:
> Until recently, the path given was to /var/cache/apt/archives/ where
> .deb files are actually kept.  I see they are now copied to
> /tmp/apt-dpkg-install-iwKqmD/ and prefixed by ordinal numbers, but that
> temporary directory ceases to exist before apt returns, thus is useless to
> the user.

s#copied#symlinked# but yes. The reason is simply that we avoid too long
commandlines and allow dpkg some wiggle room in terms of ordering this
way as we are able to just say "install all debs in this directory"
then. APT is suggesting an order with the numbers still to avoid running
into as of yet unfixed M-A:same and up/down breaks involving ordering
bugs in dpkg.

I don't see what we can be doing about this through. dpkg can't follow
the symlinks directly as that would spoil the ordering suggestion apt
(and perhaps others) make this way and order can be quite important
– although it might decide that this isn't an interface it wants to
support (given its kind of an accident it got introduced as this wasn't
ordered until 1.18.5, but I got nonbinding IRC approval on using it…)
which means we have to disable this again… :/

It could perhaps follow the symlinks in output only, but that would be
wrong any time the symlink is part of the problem and also kinda ugly.
It could do it only if it realizes that this is apt doing this, but…
urgs I guess.

On the other hand apt can't rewrite the error messages. We could keep
the temporary directory in case of error, but likely the minute we do we
get a bugreport that we leave temporary files around filling up peoples
/tmp. And of course we could go willingly back to the old invocation
style:

// force apt to not use the --recursive invocation style
dpkg::install::recursive "false";
dpkg::install::recursive::force "true";


So, lets let everyone pick his/her preferred poison and we will see who
dies last in this vote… (cc'ed dpkg as they are as involved in it as apt
is).


Best regards

David Kalnischkies

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