[Aptitude-devel] Bug#778993: aptitude: No help for "l" command inside of the program; Ref man or User guide

G. A. Craig Carey tangentangle at pochta.ru
Sun Feb 22 18:06:37 UTC 2015


Package: aptitude
Version: 0.6.11-1+b1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

The "Aptitude On-Line Help" page that appears when the "?" key is
 pressed, has the problem of not giving any information that
 suggests that there is a "l" key command. Now the "l" seems useful.
Just a single extra line or more, produced by a print statement, is
 what this bug report is after.

Eg. "'l' : See the /usr/...xyz.html file for a description.

---

Some of the following is under the title of this doc.

Also, there is a bad problem with the term
    "Aptitude Reference Manual"
 in the man page. It is apparently vaguely identifying a file that
 can't be viewed or that does not exist.

The situation seems to be that the "man page"'s
        "Aptitude Reference Manual",

    is the same as the,

        "aptitude user's manual"                      (Title)
        /usr/share/doc/aptitude/html/en/index.html    (Path).

To get I pressed the "C" key on the line for "aptitide" and then saw:

  "- Fix the SEE ALSO entry for the reference manual. (Closes #265723)",

 and next, the bug report page of that (bugs.debian.org) had vagueness
 about names but had a file path identifying the
 "aptitude user's manual". The bug report is on a need to add "/en/".

---

This #514541 bug report is about missing documentation for same "l" key
 command inside of "Aptitude":

  | Debian Bug report logs - #514541
  | Reported by: Allan Wind <allan_wind at lifeintegrity.com>
  | Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009 17:12:03 UTC
  | Severity: minor
  |
  | To: Debian Bug Tracking System <submit at bugs.debian.org>
  | Subject: help: "l" Limit display to this search pattern

  | I use the "l" command all the time and noticed that it was missing, and
  |  it would be great if the filter syntax could be documented both in the
  |  help and man page.

---

This help.ubuntu webpage,

   https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptitudeSurvivalGuide

 says this:

   |  Searching for packages
   |
   |   * / - (forward slash) search forward for search term or partial
   |            package name
   |     \ - (back slash) search backwards for search term or partial
   |            package name
   |     l - (lower case L) limit the view to packages matching the
   |            search expression.
   |
   | Useful search terms
   |
   |   ~ is 'tilde'
   |   * ~b - matches broken packages
   |     ~c - matches partially uninstalled packages ('configured, but
   |            not installed')
   |     ~ahold - matches held packages
   |     ~dtext - searches descriptions for text
   |
   |   ~i - matches installed packages

---

Wish item: less chars in the "~ahold" string. With an aim of something that
 is more consistent and forgotten less easily. I shan't say "h" of "hold",
 since that is favouring an English word. Also a single "hold" level is
 perhaps something that can't survive 20 years or more.

--

Minor wish item: The same internal help page (of the '?' key) is lacking
 subtitles. The matter here is that designer was satisfied with using blank
 lines and I am assuming that a few extra lines more showing subtitles is
 making an improvement (not to the length, buit overall).
There is a separation of the nature of key commands into:

 (a) Help lines about key commands that affect only 1 package.
 (b) Other similar help lines that are about more lines than that.

                                - - -

-- Package-specific info:
Terminal: linux
$DISPLAY not set.
which aptitude: /usr/bin/aptitude

aptitude version information:
aptitude 0.6.11 compiled at Nov  8 2014 13:25:38
Compiler: g++ 4.9.1
Compiled against:
  apt version 4.12.0
  NCurses version 5.9
  libsigc++ version: 2.4.0
  Gtk+ support disabled.
  Qt support disabled.

Current library versions:
  NCurses version: ncurses 5.9.20140913
  cwidget version: 0.5.17
  Apt version: 4.12.0

aptitude linkage:
	linux-gate.so.1 (0xb7737000)
	libapt-pkg.so.4.12 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.4.12 (0xb7197000)
	libncursesw.so.5 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.5 (0xb715b000)
	libtinfo.so.5 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libtinfo.so.5 (0xb7137000)
	libsigc-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libsigc-2.0.so.0 (0xb7130000)
	libcwidget.so.3 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libcwidget.so.3 (0xb702c000)
	libsqlite3.so.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libsqlite3.so.0 (0xb6f53000)
	libboost_iostreams.so.1.55.0 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libboost_iostreams.so.1.55.0 (0xb6f3b000)
	libxapian.so.22 => /usr/lib/sse2/libxapian.so.22 (0xb6d33000)
	libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0xb6d18000)
	libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb6c26000)
	libm.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0xb6be1000)
	libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb6bc4000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb6a51000)
	libutil.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libutil.so.1 (0xb6a4d000)
	libdl.so.2 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0xb6a48000)
	libz.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libz.so.1 (0xb6a2b000)
	libbz2.so.1.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libbz2.so.1.0 (0xb6a18000)
	liblzma.so.5 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/liblzma.so.5 (0xb69ee000)
	librt.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/librt.so.1 (0xb69e5000)
	libuuid.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1 (0xb69df000)
	/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb7738000)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
  APT prefers testing-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'testing-updates'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-686-pae (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_NZ.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_NZ.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages aptitude depends on:
ii  aptitude-common           0.6.11-1
ii  libapt-pkg4.12            1.0.9.6
ii  libboost-iostreams1.55.0  1.55.0+dfsg-3
ii  libc6                     2.19-13
ii  libcwidget3               0.5.17-2
ii  libgcc1                   1:4.9.1-19
ii  libncursesw5              5.9+20140913-1+b1
ii  libsigc++-2.0-0c2a        2.4.0-1
ii  libsqlite3-0              3.8.7.1-1
ii  libstdc++6                4.9.1-19
ii  libtinfo5                 5.9+20140913-1+b1
ii  libxapian22               1.2.19-1

Versions of packages aptitude recommends:
ii  aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-doc]  0.6.11-1
pn  libparse-debianchangelog-perl   <none>
ii  sensible-utils                  0.0.9

Versions of packages aptitude suggests:
pn  apt-xapian-index  <none>
pn  debtags           <none>
ii  tasksel           3.29

-- no debconf information



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