Bug#1120979: Bug#1119906: dselect: Replacing available packages info, using -.

[Martin-Éric Racine <martin-eric.racine@iki.fi>]

On Wed, 19 Nov 2025 03:23:28 +0100 Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org> wrote:
> Control: clone -1 -2
> Control: reassign -2 apt
> Control: retitle -2 apt: Suppress dselect method "replacing available" message
> Control: tag -2 patch
>
> [ Leaving enough context for the apt cloned bug. ]
>
> Hi!
>
> On Sun, 2025-11-09 at 09:17:44 +0200, Martin-Éric Racine wrote:
> > la 8.11.2025 klo 19.34 Guillem Jover (guillem@debian.org) kirjoitti:
> > > On Sun, 2025-11-02 at 11:41:15 +0200, Martin-Éric Racine wrote:
> > > > Package: dselect
> > > > Version: 1.22.21
> > > > Severity: normal
> > > > X-Debbugs-Cc: martin-eric.racine@iki.fi
> > >
> > > > dselect displays the above on a system that has either an empty or
> > > > non-existent /etc/apt/sources.list file. Meanwhile dselects' APT
> > > > method obviously can use /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.[list|sources]
> > > > as normal. However, the above prompt is misleading.
> > >
> > > > Perhaps dselect should be updated to list all files found in
> > > > /etc/apt/sources.list[.d/*] and omit empty files?
> > >
> > > This is not related to the apt source.list files or their format. This
> > > is a recent change that switched the «dpkg --update-avail» invocation
> > > to get its input from a «apt-cache dumpavail» pipe instead of having
> > > to use a temporary file, which nowadays can be large.
> > >
> > >   https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/apt/-/commit/4d6fcb1dddd5654e7ba8bfa2705bbb4f2c4a6884
> > >
> > > I've updated the information message in dpkg to print in this case the
> > > following text instead:
> > >
> > >   ,---
> > >   Replacing available packages information from <standard input>.
> > >   `---
> > >
> > > Which should be more clear, but I'm not sure whether it would help
> > > with the confusion reported here? Otherwise, except for completely
> > > suppressing the message from the apt's dselect method (in which case
> > > this would need to be reassigned into apt), there's not much I think
> > > can be done.
> >
> > TBH, if /var/cache/apt/available simply is no longer used, keeping the
> > message doesn't accomplish much.
>
> Ok, let's do that as well then. I'm keeping this report in dpkg, for
> the message update, and cloning it to apt to suppress the message,
> which the attached patch should do.

Thanks for cloning this just for the APT part of the questions..

Now, I'd like to hear whether the APT team will merge your patch.

Martin-Éric