Control: clone -1 -2 Control: retitle -2 aptitude: "aptitude -u" does not show download warnings emitted by "aptitude update" after the successful download of package lists. Control: clone -1 -3 Control: retitle -3 aptitude: "aptitude update" does not show all NOTICE level messages if apt would change the default messages threshold to NOTICE Control: severity -3 minor Control: submitter -3 ! Control: clone -1 -4 Control: retitle -4 aptitude: apt's message threshold level should be configurable in aptitude (especially for the TUI), maybe via --log-level? Control: severity -4 wishlist Control: submitter -4 ! Control: severity -1 minor Control: tag -1 + wontfix
Hi Vincent, thanks for making us aware of the subtle difference between apt and aptitude with regards to warnings and notices. > This message should have been displayed by aptitude. Did you test "aptitude update" or "aptitude -u" or both? It's not clear from your bug report so far. (They behave differently in this hindsight as I found out while digging into this topic, see below.) > Without it, the user who uses aptitude only may never be aware of > this change […] This is wrong. Without doubt this type of information will be part of the release notes — which is usually the _primary_ source for these type of changes. I'm actually surprised that apt added such a message. Besides that, the apt developers decided to output this only as LOW severity message on the "notice" level (prefix by "N:" and in normal font face; AFAIK the lowest level). Aptitude shows "error" messages from apt to the user, but only those at the "WARNING" level or above (or at least only from somewhere above the "NOTICE" level). It is currently unclear to me if this is historically grown as apt (not aptitude) defines the _default_ message threshold by apt in /usr/include/apt-pkg/error.h as "WARNING" in at least three places. I at least currently assume that this is what aptitude uses when it calls DumpErrors. According the apt's changelog, "WARNING" was for quite some time also the lowest possible message level. ("NOTICE" and "DEBUG" levels got added in 0.7.26~exp8.) I also do see some sense to suppress some less important messages in aptitude: All those messages would cause popup window in the TUI mode which the user has to acknowledge (aka "to click away"). That can get very annoying if there are too many low severity messages. So IMHO it's not so bad that aptitude only shows more important messages. Besides, it's the default threshold from apt. Then again, "aptitude -u" does not show any of the warnings (or notices) I currently get with "aptitude update", so "aptitude -u" only seems to cause popups of warnings which are caused directly during the download and not after a successful download. Cloning this as a separate bug report. Anyway, back to the original topic. So I edited /usr/include/apt-pkg/error.h temporarily and replaced all but the first occurence (which is the definition) of WARNING with NOTICE and then compiled aptitude against it. aptitude update indeed showed notices now. But to my surprise not all of them, just this one: N: Skipping acquire of configured file 'main/binary-i386/Packages' as repository 'file:/var/cache/apt-build/repository apt-build InRelease' doesn't support architecture 'i386' Not yet sure if this is a bug in the way how the missing notices are generated in apt or if it is a bug in aptitude not coping with the changed default message threshold. Likely needs deeper investigation (or better overview of the code), probably by Manuel. (I already put hours in investigating this IMHO rather minor issue, just to understand a bit how the innards of messages inside apt and aptitude are working.) Filing as yet another separate bug report against aptitude (for now at least), but with severity minor, as it currently does only show up after a hypothetical modification in apt. I'm also surprised that, despite the default threshold in /usr/include/apt-pkg/error.h is WARNING, both, "apt update" and "apt-get update" show notices. So the apt developers changed the thresholds for both CLI frontends individually? Weird. And JFTR: "aptitude update" does show the WARNING level messages from apt about "Key is stored in legacy trusted.gpg keyring (/etc/apt/trusted.gpg), see the DEPRECATION section in apt-key(8) for details." which apt also shows in a bold font face compared to seemingly not important messages like these about the non-free-firmware repo. (Not "aptitude -u", though.) Admittedly the message level threshold of aptitude should be user configurable so that every user/admin can adjust their own TUI popup annoyance level. Actually I would have expected to see those notices on --log-level=info, but I didn't and from the code it also seems that this option has no influence on how aptitude uses apt's DumpErrors(). Anyway, despite I uncovered some more severe issues while trying to understand how apt's and aptitude's message handling works internally, I strongly disagree about the severity of the initial bug report (at least those parts which were clear enough) and agree with the apt developers that the message about the Debian bookworm change concerning non-free-firmware is only a notice, not a warning. And I don't expect that Manuel (and surely not me myself) will change something in the way aptitude handles messages from apt for bookworm as it likely will be way more invasive than is good at this stage of the freeze. Hence tagging it as wontfix, too. Regards, Axel -- ,''`. | Axel Beckert <a...@debian.org>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/ : :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin `. `' | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5 `- | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE _______________________________________________ Aptitude-devel mailing list Aptitude-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net https://alioth-lists.debian.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/aptitude-devel