[Aptitude-devel] Bug#687888: usability: shouldn't list each arch as a separate package

[Daniel Hartwig]

On 17 September 2012 17:56, Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org> wrote:
> I've set Aptitude::UI::Default-Grouping to a value starting with
> "status,pattern(?architecture(foreign) => Foreign architecture, ?true ||),..."
>
> So under "Installed Packages", "New Packages", etc. I see as first
> submenu "Foreign architecture" and then just the normal view. That way
> I easily keep those packages separated.

An interesting approach.  This would be a better default than a
display limit of “?architecture(native)”.

I think that synaptic uses a display limit, but it is for preferred
arch. rather than native.  So native is shown unless there is no
native.  Such would be ok for aptitude as well but we do not have such
a search term yet.

Although not a complete resolution to this issue, I guess we can add a
new configuration item which defaults to on, and affects either the
default display limit (to preferred-arch) or sets the default grouping
policy to something like Axel mentions.

That is an ok measure, but it interacts poorly if the user has already
either the default grouping or display limit, because then this new
option would have no impact.

Better is to aggregate the multiple architectures together some how.
I have thought about ways to effectively do that and will put some
notes up on wiki.d.o in the next few days.

Regards