[Aptitude-devel] Bug#1080321: aptitude-common: TUI re-fetches packages already fetched by the CLI

[Manny]

Package: aptitude-common
Version: 0.8.13-5
Severity: normal
X-Debbugs-Cc: debbug.aptitude-common at sideload.33mail.com

This was executed when connected to a good high-speed Internet
connection:

  $ aptitude upgrade -D

That fetched all pkgs without installing them. Then a week later when
on a capped Internet connection, aptitude was executed with no
arguments to launch the TUI. This was done because the CLI gives no
way to selectively exclude a package from the upgrade for an operation
for just one execution. The TUI makes it possible to exclude a package
on a one-off basis. These steps were followed:

  $ aptitude
  Entered “+” on the “Upgradeable” line
  Expanded the tree and highlighted a pkg to exclude from the upgrade
  Entered “:” to unmark a pkg
  Entered “u” on the “Upgradeable” line

It proceeded to download /everything/. Internet credit was getting
sucked dry. Why?  I had to quickly kill the operation. Then I ran this:

  $ aptitude upgrade --simulate

The output printed:

  “Need to get 1,979 kB/567 MB of archives,”

That means only a small amount needs to fetched. Just two megs, likely
a new prospective upgrade was detected the 1 week lag between the
download. But the TUI was re-downloading all 567mb. The aptitude TUI
and CLI should be storing the data in the same location.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.5
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (990, 'stable-updates'), (990, 'stable-security'), (990, 'stable'), (500, 'oldstable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-28-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU threads)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

aptitude-common depends on no packages.

Versions of packages aptitude-common recommends:
ii  aptitude  0.8.13-5

aptitude-common suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information