[Aptitude-devel] aptitude ~A question

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Steve,

Steve wrote:
> Thank you for your explanation, I understand a bit better the logic. But
> there is still something that doesn't quite match. Please consider the
> following.
[...]
> a=              aptitude search ~A[$a]~i | wc -l 					dpkg -l | grep ^ii | wc -l
> trusty                                    16
> jessie$                                    0
> jessie-backports                         248
> stable                                  3243
> TOTAL                                   3507                3349
> now                                     3349                3349
> 
> 
> so 3507 ≠ 3349. Both figures should be equal as I understand.

Nope.

There are packages where one version is in stable and another version
is in jessie-backports. Those are likely counted twice if any version
is installed, i.e. there are likely about 158 packages which are
either installed from backports and which are also available in stable
or vice versa.

Background is that even if you use ~A and ~i the same search term,
they don't necessarily match the same version of the package if
multiple versions of a package are available.

I don't know all the details by mind as I rather seldom run into
issues where this is relevant, but the details are explained on
https://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/ch02s04s03.html

Please also see the patterns ?all-versions(), ?any-version(),
?narrow() and ?widen() on
https://aptitude.alioth.debian.org/doc/en/ch02s04s05.html

HTH.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
 ,''`.  |  Axel Beckert <abe at debian.org>, http://people.debian.org/~abe/
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