[Aptitude-devel] Bug#405506: aptitude cannot parse package file

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + moreinfo - unreproducible
Control: severity -1 wishlist
Control: retitle -1 handle corrupted pkgstate more gracefully

I think that if this bug is to be kept open and fixed, this proposal
from Daniel Burrows is the way to go (and the only remaining useful
bit from the bug report).  Retitling etc. accordingly.

-------------

  Maybe aptitude should offer to restore pkgstate.old or move the
corrupt file out of the way.  This would be a bit more graceful than
going "gaaack" and dying.

  The basic idea (if the user asks to recover) would be
    (1) move pkgstates to pkgstates.broken.NUM where NUM is the first
unused number (actually use link(2) to avoid clobbering existing
files).
    (2) if pkgstates.old exists, move it to pkgstates.
    (3) if pkgstates exists and is not parsable, go to (1) (i.e., move
pkgstates.old out of the way and start completely from scratch)


-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>