On Sun 17 Dec 2023 at 01:06:28 (-0500), Stefan Monnier wrote: > > Some packages will stay the same for years, but in the past week > > I can see four occasions when changes in list contents have occurred > > on oldstable. So there's little similarity. > > The question is not really whether "apt/lists" is similar to > "apt/archives", but whether the content of "apt/lists" is appropriate > for `/var/cache`.
I didn't bring up apt/archives, but my first words posted were: "This may not answer your question". > AFAIK nothing bad will happen to your system if you delete > `/var/lib/apt/lists`. It will still run as before and you can still > install packages as before. As you said. > The only thing that seems to be impacted is > that some APT operations will temporarily work in a kind of "degraded" > mode until the next `apt update`. As I said. On how significant that difference is, we beg to differ. > That seems similar to things like `locate` failing if you remove > `/var/log/plocate/plocate.db` (until that DB is rebuilt). It's tricky to discern your point as /var/log/ is not involved. Cheers, David.