[Aptitude-devel] Bug#883242: Bug#883242: aptitude: lists packages from non-Debian origins as "The main Debian archive"

[Axel Beckert]

Control: tag -1 + confirmed
Control: severity -1 minor

Hi Simon,

Simon McVittie wrote:
>     --\ New Packages (1)
>       --\ games          Games, toys, and fun programs (1)
>         --\ main           The main Debian archive (1)
>     p     steam-launcher                                <none>         1.0.0.54

The string "The main Debian archive" is a static description string
for archives called "main" and does not handle any kind of "origin".
See
https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/aptitude/aptitude.git/tree/section-descriptions#n83
for the place where the string comes from.

I can't tell you since when this is the case as this static string
hasn't changed since at least 2005 when the contents from old
Subversion repository has been imported (without history) into
Mercurial.

So this generally happens if some other repo also contains an archive
named "main" or if there is no archive name given[1].

[1] Couldn't find the actual code for that, but it's the case
    according to the comment at
    https://anonscm.debian.org/cgit/aptitude/aptitude.git/tree/src/pkg_grouppolicy.h#n129

So yes, this should be fixed as it's indeed wrong and confusing.

But it's the case like this since ages (at least nearly two decades)
and nobody bothered(*) until now. Hence downgrading the severity to
"minor". (Feel free to raise the severity again if you disagree with
my reasoning.)

And it's probably neither clear how to fix it (What logic should be
implemented given those static descriptions? Do we need a "main"
description for Debian and for Non-Debian?) nor if it will be trivial
to fix as the current method is dead simple.

(*) I'm actually aware of that shortcoming for years now, but it never
    bothered me enough that I even thought about documenting it in a
    bug report.

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