[Aptitude-devel] Bug#931718: Bug#931718: new packages list forgets about old packages

[Axel Beckert]

Control: tag -1 - moreinfo unreproducible + confirmed

Hi Matus,

Matus UHLAR - fantomas wrote:
> On 09.07.19 18:05, Axel Beckert wrote:
> > I assume you did not exit aptitude inbetween, right
> 
> I did. What I did was:

Ok, exiting aptitude inbetween is what I usually do, too.

> 2. change sources.list to point to buster archive.
> 
> # rm sources.list; ln -s sources.list.buster sources.list

I don't think that using a symlink instead of editing the file makes a
difference.

> 3. run aptitude, see only installed packages marked as obsolete:
> 
> --- Obsolete and Locally Created Packages (3978)
[...]
> 4. run 'u'pdate packages list, see no old packages, but all uninstalled as
> new:

Gotcha! Doing this in two instead of one step is is the relevant
difference and cause for this issue.

I usually use "aptitude -u" instead here, which updates the package
lists before calculating any view and then there's no problem either.
(Also speeds things up as the view needs to be built only once. :-)

So as soon as you generate a new view with all packages obsolete, it's
clear that afterwards, all other packages are new.

I suspect that this is caused by some subtle change in how libapt sees
its cache if the sources.list has been modified after the last package
list update".

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