[Aptitude-devel] Bug#991578: Bug#991578: aptitude: document state indicator letters more clearly

[Axel Beckert]

Hi Greg,

Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 28, 2021 at 10:06:45AM +0200, Axel Beckert wrote:
> > From my mind there are also some more possible states, which seem not
> > to be documented in the manual at all on a first glance. IIRC these
> > are:
> > 
> > H or h = on hold
> > U or u = unpacked, but not configured, e.g. if the configure step in
> >          the previous run failed.
> > B      = broken (dependencies are not fullfilled)
> > F      = forbidden version
> 
> For whatever reason, the aptitude developers did not include all of
> the state letters in the man page.  They only included the "most
> common" ones,

Ah, didn't notice this was in the man page and not the complete
manual.

> even though the example right above that section includes
> a letter that isn't in their list ("h").

Hehe.

> This patch only moves things around within the man page.

Yeah, I'm aware of it. I just used your bug report as reminder that
this part might need some more care on top of your patch.

> A larger set of state letters is documented at
> <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02.en.html> (more
> specifically,
> <https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/aptitude/ch02s02s02.en.html>)
> which I *think* is what the man page is referring to when it talks
> about an "aptitude reference manual" or "reference guide".

Yes. Thanks for the pointer that we have them already in the manual.

> I don't know whether that's a complete set either.

Looks complete on a first glance. *phew* :-)

> The developers chose to keep that information out of the man page,

Yeah, in the man page this might make sense.

> and I didn't want to step on any toes,

As mentioned before, my mail was no critic on your patch. Just an
addendum for us Aptitude maintainers.

> If the developers would like the full set of state letters to
> be documented in the man page, I would definitely welcome that.

Thanks for sharing your opinion on that!

		Regards, Axel
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