[Aptitude-devel] Bug#597549: aptitude: Please skip "more than 40 packages match pattern" when using ":" to resolve an upgrade (interactive mode)

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Hi,

Ssimply forwarding this reply to the BTS, for the record and future
investigation.


2016-05-07 19:05 GMT+01:00 Daniel Hahler <debian-bugs at thequod.de>:
> On 04.05.2016 17:02, Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo wrote:
>
>>> Using ":package-name-or-pattern" during upgrade/installation is very
>>> useful to skip some package(s).
>>>
>>> However, the check if more than 40 packages match a pattern gets applied
>>> also, without limiting it to effective packages being matched (those in
>>> the list to install/upgrade).
>>>
>>> The message is:
>>>  "Couldn't find package \"%s\", and more than 40\npackages
>>>  contain \"%s\" in their name"
>>>
>>> Please skip this check altogether in interactive mode (in contrast to
>>> the pattern being passed on the command line), or - maybe better - limit
>>> it to the effective packages being matched, i.e. when using ":php5-*" to
>>> leave all php5-* packages as is for this upgrade, just reject the
>>> pattern, if more than 40 php5-packages would have been upgraded (in
>>> contrast to more than 40 php5-packages known to aptitude).
>>
>> I don't understand very well the request.  What's the purpose of this?
>>
>> The user already knows that all packages matching "php5-*" are going to
>> be kept, no need to show all 145 of them (count of packages named like
>> that today).
>
> IIRC it's not possible to use ":php5-*" (if that's the correct syntax) to keep all (installed) packages starting with "php5-", because there's an error that too many packages match this pattern.
>
> But the filter should only apply to the installed packages, not all available packages probably - at least regarding the limit.
>
> The use case is to keep a set of packages with a common prefix easily.
>
>
> --
> Thanks,
> Daniel.



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