[Aptitude-devel] Bug#596225: aptitude: merging bugs 596225 596221 357828

[Daniel Hartwig]

On 22 February 2012 03:29, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo
<manuel.montezelo at gmail.com> wrote:
> forcemerge 596225 596221 357828
> tags 596225 + confirmed
> stop
>
> The first two are really the same bug report repeating, the second one
> is an older request -- but setting 596225 as "primary" because it
> contains a concrete example of things going wrong with the way that
> aptitude currently works.
>
> However, this bug contradicts #489706 [1] on the other direction,
> recently accepted in aptitude v0.6.5-1.
>

I generally agree with the sentiments in these bug reports that log
files should be machine-parseable and, therefore, not translated.

There is much room for improvement in the aptitude log file.  Take a
log at these two logs:

-- /var/log/aptitude.1.gz
Aptitude 0.6.3: log report
Mon, Jan  9 2012 16:06:11 +0800

IMPORTANT: this log only lists intended actions; actions which fail due to
dpkg problems may not be completed.

Will install 0 packages, and remove 6 packages.
17.2 MB of disk space will be freed
===============================================================================
[REMOVE, NOT USED] libmozjs7d
[HOLD, DEPENDENCIES] cups-common
[HOLD, DEPENDENCIES] cups-ppdc
…
[HOLD] acpid
[HOLD] bind9-host
…
[REMOVE] nvidia-glx
[REMOVE] nvidia-vdpau-driver
[REMOVE] update-manager-gnome
[REMOVE] update-notifier
[REMOVE] update-notifier-common
===============================================================================

Log complete.
Aptitude 0.6.3: log report
Tue, Jan 24 2012 22:11:07 +0800

IMPORTANT: this log only lists intended actions; actions which fail due to
dpkg problems may not be completed.

Will install 2 packages, and remove 0 packages.
===============================================================================
[HOLD, DEPENDENCIES] cups-common
[HOLD, DEPENDENCIES] cups-ppdc
…
[HOLD] acpid
[HOLD] bind9-host
…
[UPGRADE] libpam-modules 1.1.1-6.1 -> 1.1.1-6.1+squeeze1
[UPGRADE] libpam0g 1.1.1-6.1 -> 1.1.1-6.1+squeeze1
===============================================================================

Log complete.
--

-- /var/log/apt/history.log.1.gz
Start-Date: 2012-01-09  16:06:13
Remove: libmozjs7d:i386 (7.0.1-1~bpo60+1)
Purge: nvidia-vdpau-driver:i386 (195.36.31-6),
update-manager-gnome:i386 (0.200.5-1), update-notifier-common:i386
(0.99.3debian8), update-notifier:i386 (0.99.3debian8), nvidia-glx:i386
(195.36.31-6)
End-Date: 2012-01-09  16:07:22

Start-Date: 2012-01-24  22:11:09
Upgrade: libpam0g:i386 (1.1.1-6.1, 1.1.1-6.1+squeeze1),
libpam-modules:i386 (1.1.1-6.1, 1.1.1-6.1+squeeze1)
End-Date: 2012-01-24  22:11:41
--

For the most part, these two logs contain the same information.  The
aptitude log contains some extra items:

- program version
- note that the log indicates only intended actions
- statistics
- list of held packages
- note that a package is being removed because it is not used

IMO the apt log is superior:

- machine-parseable using a standard format[1]
- very concise, easy to see what is going on
- includes a copy of the command-line used (e.g. "apt-get install foo bar-")
- entries are clearly seperated from each other

If we consider dropping most of the useless information from
aptitude's log then what we are left with is basically a duplicate of
the apt's.  Given that, I am in favour of removing the aptitude log
file completely and let apt handle this.

Thoughts?


[1] deb822 parser in the python-debian package