[Aptitude-devel] Bug#834790: Bug#834790: aptitude hangs at "Loading cache" when unable to download package list

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

2016-08-21 10:02 Kipp Cannon:
>
>> But in that case, I think that for most of these possible conditions,
>> the errors would be clear enough for the user to know that s/he has
>> to
>> rectify the file, and for that one probably will quit aptitude
>> anyway,
>> or will occur to them that the typos and subsequent errors are the
>> main
>> cause of aptitude being stuck, and will indicate to them that
>> restarting
>> aptitude is necessary/advisable.
>>
>>
>> Cheers.
>
>Well ... I understand that you don't see the same behaviour I'm seeing,
>but I think if you were you'd agree that the behaviour I'm seeing is
>not good.
>
>Anyway, I can't offer a patch, so, oh well.  Thanks again,

Actually, I am not sure what to say about the new behaviour being good
or not.  If it happened to me, I would quit aptitude and fix all the
errors before wanting to proceed with any package viewing or
installation, so the fact that it doesn't show any packages /after/
showing errors wouldn't bother me.

I can see how other people can think otherwise (and thanks for reporting
it, by the way), but in any case, my point was that at least it happens
/after/ errors being shown (and not randomly in the absence of errors,
or not showing packages but not showing errors either), people can
associate the lack of packages in the screen with the previous errors,
and it will occur to them that by fixing the source of the errors
aptitude will be able to work fine.


As why this happens with 0.8 and didn't happen with 0.6, not sure, but
probably it's because aptitude is much more stringent with error
checking (to e.g. not go ahead with operations like installing packages
if some fail to download), which were situations for which many people
complained about for years.

In any case, yes, we would need to either reproduce it or a patch to be
able to progress further.


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