Hi Steve, steve wrote: > I'm trying to understand why > > aptitude search ~Ajessie~i | wc -l > 240 > > is different from > > aptitude search ~Astable~i | wc -l > 3243 > > but is the same as > > aptitude search ~Ajessie-backports~i | wc -l > 240
The main reason is that ~A does (as most of aptitude's patterns) substring matching, e.g. the jessie-backports repository has the following meta data (from the output of "apt-cache policy" without further parameters): release o=Debian Backports,a=jessie-backports,n=jessie-backports,l=Debian Backports,c=main ~A matches the "a=" value. And since it does substring matching, ~Ajessie also matches a=jessie-backports. The value of "a=" again comes from the Archive field in a repository's Release file, e.g. http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/dists/jessie-backports/main/binary-amd64/Release Then again the normal jessie/stable repository has the following meta data: release v=8.6,o=Debian,a=stable,n=jessie,l=Debian,c=main (According Release file: http://ftp.ch.debian.org/debian/dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Release) You see that there is a=stable while "jessie" only is in the "n=" value(*), so ~Ajessie does not match these packages. (*) which is not even mentioned in the Release file listed above and hence probably comes from the sources.list -- not sure here, but the APT developers can likely explain that detail. I don't know if that inconsistency between stable and jessie-backports is on purpose (and if so, why) or by accident. Cc'ing the debian-backports mailing list for that part. There someone can probably explain that. > This is something difficult to interpret and that's the reason I'm > raising this question on aptitude-devel@ (this subject is currently > being discussed on debian-user@ without any success). So I'm Cc'ing debian-user too. > Reading the docs and asking search engines hasn't given much > unfortunately. May I ask to explain or point me to a relevant > ressource? Short summary of what IMHO is the relevant facts here: * aptitude's ~A pattern matches substrings of the Archive value in the Release file. * Jessie's APT repositories have "stable" and not "jessie" in the Archive value in the Release file. The according documentation is at https://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/ch02s04s05.html#searchArchive but I must admit, it's not perfect as it does not help with your question. Hope this helps. Regards, Axel -- ,''`. | Axel Beckert <a...@debian.org>, http://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
