[Aptitude-devel] Bug#931543: Bug#931536: aptitude update fails to cope with changed release info

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Francesco, Michael and Sven,

Francesco Poli (wintermute) wrote:
> As you know, Debian buster has been released yesterday and the current
> Debian testing has just been renamed from 'buster' to 'bullseye'.
> 
> Good, but... today I tried to update the repository lists and upgrade
> my Debian testing boxes with aptitude:
[…]
>   E: Repository 'http://deb.debian.org/debian testing InRelease' changed its 'Codename' value from 'buster' to 'bullseye'
>   E: Failed to download some files
>   W: Failed to fetch http://deb.debian.org/debian/dists/testing/InRelease: 
>   E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

Indeed. This also seems to have an impact where buster changed from
"testing" to "stable", see https://bugs.debian.org/931543.

That's actually prompted by a change in libapt (as Sven already
pointed out in #931543) which aptitude indeed hasn't been updated a
for.

I though must admit that we actually were aware of this issue as I ran
into it with a third-party repo a few months ago, see
https://bugs.debian.org/915246. But admittedly I totally
underestimated its severity and especially also its impact at release
time as I didn't think of that exactly the same will happen when
Debian shifts all suite names at release time. Sorry for that.

I hope that Manuel (CCc'ed) can provide a fix which we then can also
apply to aptitude in Buster in the first minor update which is
expected in about a month.

The official workaround is to use "apt update" once inbetween, answer
its questions (with "y" :-) and then continue to use aptitude.

		Regards, Axel
-- 
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