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

[Martin Schwenke]

I'm seeing this too.  I have a source that is only visible when my
laptop is on a particular network...

On Mon, 22 Aug 2016 11:11:17 +0100 "Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo"
<manuel.montezelo at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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.

Ahhh! But the old behaviour was convenient!  I could use the same
sources.list and happily ignore the failure when updating from a
network where the source is not accessible.  Now I will need to edit my
source.list to enable/disable that source when I switch networks.

So, the new behaviour does bother me!  I want "broken" sources.list
lines to continue to generate a warning, allowing me to continue, rather
than generating a "fatal" error... ;-)

peace & happiness,
martin