[Aptitude-devel] Bug#673099: aptitude: search always treats multiarch variants as unrelated

[Aaron M. Ucko]

Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.7-1
Severity: wishlist

Thanks for giving aptitude full multiarch support!  When I proceeded
to enable it, I found that foreign packages showed up as distinct
items (with architecture-tagged names).  That approach makes a lot of
sense on the whole, but limits search possibilities; in particular,
the only way I found to determine which packages are available just
for a specific architecture (native or foreign) was to search by
architecture from the command line and save the results to files I
proceeded to feed to the comm utility.

While that arrangement did give me package lists, it's far more
awkward than I care for, particularly considering that proceeding to
explore those lists within aptitude would have required making them
the basis for user tags, which would then require regular
resynchronization.  As such, I'd appreciate an extension to aptitude's
filter language that would enable built-in support for such searches.

Specifically, I propose ?any-architecture and ?all-architectures
combinators akin to ?any-version and ?all-versions, enabling, e.g.,
?all-architectures(~rforeign).  However, I'd also be okay with a more
ad-hoc approach, with syntax along the lines of ?sole-architecture
(which would take an architecture name) or even a simple
?limited-architectures.

Could you please implement something along those lines when you get a
chance?  (Please work on #672340 first, though. ;-)

Thanks!

-- Package-specific info:
Terminal: xterm
$DISPLAY is set.
which aptitude: /usr/bin/aptitude

aptitude version information:
aptitude 0.6.7 compiled at May  5 2012 02:05:03
Compiler: g++ 4.6.3
Compiled against:
  apt version 4.12.0
  NCurses version 5.9
  libsigc++ version: 2.2.10
  Ept support enabled.
  Gtk+ support disabled.
  Qt support disabled.

Current library versions:
  NCurses version: ncurses 5.9.20110404
  cwidget version: 0.5.16
  Apt version: 4.12.0

aptitude linkage:
	linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x00007fff435c7000)
	libapt-pkg.so.4.12 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.4.12 (0x00007f9f34bd4000)
	libncursesw.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.5 (0x00007f9f349a5000)
	libtinfo.so.5 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.5 (0x00007f9f3477c000)
	libsigc-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libsigc-2.0.so.0 (0x00007f9f34577000)
	libcwidget.so.3 => /usr/lib/libcwidget.so.3 (0x00007f9f34277000)
	libept.so.1.0.5.4.12 => /usr/lib/libept.so.1.0.5.4.12 (0x00007f9f34024000)
	libxapian.so.22 => /usr/lib/libxapian.so.22 (0x00007f9f33c27000)
	libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0x00007f9f33a11000)
	libsqlite3.so.0 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so.0 (0x00007f9f33769000)
	libboost_iostreams.so.1.49.0 => /usr/lib/libboost_iostreams.so.1.49.0 (0x00007f9f33550000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007f9f33334000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007f9f3302c000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0x00007f9f32daa000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007f9f32b94000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0x00007f9f3280c000)
	libutil.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libutil.so.1 (0x00007f9f32609000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0x00007f9f32405000)
	libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0x00007f9f321f4000)
	libuuid.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0x00007f9f31fef000)
	librt.so.1 => /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0x00007f9f31de6000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007f9f35594000)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (500, 'stable'), (300, 'unstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  libapt-pkg4.12            0.9.3
ii  libboost-iostreams1.49.0  1.49.0-2
ii  libc6                     2.13-32
ii  libcwidget3               0.5.16-3.2
ii  libept1.4.12              1.0.6.1
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.7.0-7
ii  libncursesw5              5.9-7
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.2.10-0.1
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.7.11-3
ii  libstdc++6                4.7.0-7
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9-7
ii  libxapian22               1.2.8-1
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.7.dfsg-1

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  apt-xapian-index                0.45
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.6.7-1
ii  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   1.2.0-1
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.6

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
ii  debtags  1.9+b1
ii  tasksel  3.09

-- no debconf information