On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:30:56 +0700 Alexey Salmin wrote: > Does apt-listbugs consider the "affects" field? Probably I'm wrong but > it seems that it doesn't.
Hi Alexey, you are right that apt-listbugs does not take the "affects" field into account. But there's a reason for this: a good reason, I believe. Please read on. > Many people got almost unusable desktops > without any warning despite the fact this bug had been reported > already. You upgrade one package and crash another, this is exactly > what "affects" is for. In your example, if I understand correctly, you upgrade nvidia-graphics-drivers and crash xserver-xorg-core. This is described by the fact that bug #642757 is assigned to nvidia-graphics-drivers, but affects xserver-xorg-core. Where is the bug in this case? In nvidia-graphics-drivers, I would say: otherwise, the bug report should be reassigned elsewhere... As a consequence, which is the package that the user should _not_ upgrade or install, in order to avoid being hit by the bug? Again, nvidia-graphics-drivers. And apt-listbugs correctly checks the bugs assigned to nvidia-graphics-drivers, before the upgrade or the installation of this package. There's no use in stopping an upgrade or installation of xserver-xorg-core because of a bug that merely affects this package: it's the other package (nvidia-graphics-drivers) the only one which is able to introduce the bug into the user's system. In summary, as long as a bug report is correctly assigned to the package that is actually responsible for the issue, this package is the only one which should not be upgraded/installed, in order to avoid introducing the bug into the system. This means that apt-listbugs should ignore the "affects" field, when run in "apt" mode. Which is exactly what it does. As far as "apt-listbugs list <pkg>" is concerned, listing bugs that merely affect <pkg> (while being assigned to a different package <other_pkg>) is a bit troublesome: how does that combine with version tracking? What if the user issues "apt-listbugs list <pkg>/<version>"? There's no indication about the version of <other_pkg>... I am convinced that this would generate a bunch of unwanted "noise" in the output of the "apt-listbugs list" command. > I think this is a really good point of possible improvement. Anybody > mind if I create a wishlist on apt-listbug? I would probably tag this wishlist bug as "wontfix", for the reasons explained above. Thanks a lot anyway for trying to suggest a possible improvement! I hope I expressed myself clearly enough. Maybe I should add the above explanation to /usr/share/doc/apt-listbugs/README.Debian.gz Do you think that it would help in understanding why apt-listbugs ignores the "affects" field? -- http://www.inventati.org/frx/frx-gpg-key-transition-2010.txt New GnuPG key, see the transition document! ..................................................... Francesco Poli . GnuPG key fpr == CA01 1147 9CD2 EFDF FB82 3925 3E1C 27E1 1F69 BFFE
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