[Aptitude-devel] Bug#686316: aptitude: using APT::Default-Release breaks candidate selection with some commands

[Daniel Hartwig]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.8.1-1
Severity: normal
Tags: confirmed

Dear Maintainer,

When using apt_preferences(5), setting APT::Default-Release breaks the
candidate selection of some commands to use the version from
Default-Release always.  This is inconsistent with apt-get equivalents
and also wrong according to aptitude's own man page.

The affected commands are changelog, download, and show.  The
documentation for each of these states that the default version is
that which would be installed with “aptitude install”, i.e. the
candidate version.

--
$ cat /etc/apt/preferences
Package: *
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 999
$ apt-cache policy c2esp
c2esp:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 25c-1
  Version table:
     25c-1 0
        999 http://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian/ experimental/main i386 Packages
     24-2 0
        500 http://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian/ sid/main i386 Packages
$ apt-cache policy -t sid c2esp
c2esp:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 25c-1
  Version table:
     25c-1 0
        999 http://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian/ experimental/main i386 Packages
     24-2 0
        990 http://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian/ sid/main i386 Packages

-- changelog:
$ apt-get changelog -t sid c2esp | head -2
Get:1 Changelog for c2esp (http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/c/c2esp/c2esp_25c-1/changelog) [4,348 B]
c2esp (25c-1) experimental; urgency=low
$ aptitude changelog c2esp | head -2
Get: Changelog of c2esp
c2esp (25c-1) experimental; urgency=low
$ aptitude changelog -t sid c2esp | head -2
Get: Changelog of c2esp
c2esp (24-2) unstable; urgency=low

-- download:
$ apt-get download c2esp
Get:1 Downloading c2esp 25c-1 [3,704 B]
Fetched 3,704 B in 0s (8,539 B/s)
$ apt-get download -t sid c2esp
Get:1 Downloading c2esp 25c-1 [3,704 B]
Fetched 1 B in 0s (2 B/s)
$ aptitude download c2esp
Get: 1 http://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian/ experimental/main c2esp all 25c-1 [3,704 B]
Fetched 1 B in 0s (3 B/s)
$ aptitude download -t sid c2esp
Get: 1 http://ftp.iinet.net.au/debian/debian/ sid/main c2esp all 24-2 [3,432 B]
Fetched 1 B in 0s (3 B/s)

-- show:
$ aptitude show c2esp | grep ^Version
Version: 25c-1
$ aptitude show -t sid c2esp | grep ^Version
Version: 24-2

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Foreign Architectures: amd64

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-686-bigmem (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.6.8.1-1
ii  libapt-pkg4.12            0.9.7.4
ii  libboost-iostreams1.49.0  1.49.0-3.1
ii  libc6                     2.13-35
ii  libcwidget3               0.5.16-3.4
ii  libept1.4.12              1.0.9
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.7.1-7
ii  libncursesw5              5.9-10
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.2.10-0.2
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.7.13-1
ii  libstdc++6                4.7.1-7
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9-10
ii  libxapian22               1.2.12-1
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.7.dfsg-13

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  apt-xapian-index                0.45
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.6.8.1-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   1.2.0-1
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.7

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
ii  debtags  1.10.2
ii  tasksel  3.09

-- no debconf information