Bug#642757: apt-listbugs

[Francesco Poli]

On Mon, 17 Oct 2011 09:30:56 +0700 Alexey Salmin wrote:

> Does apt-listbugs consider the "affects" field? Probably I'm wrong but
> it seems that it doesn't.

Hi Alexey,
you are right that apt-listbugs does not take the "affects" field into
account.
But there's a reason for this: a good reason, I believe.
Please read on.

> Many people got almost unusable desktops
> without any warning despite the fact this bug had been reported
> already. You upgrade one package and crash another, this is exactly
> what "affects" is for.

In your example, if I understand correctly, you upgrade
nvidia-graphics-drivers and crash xserver-xorg-core.
This is described by the fact that bug #642757 is assigned to
nvidia-graphics-drivers, but affects xserver-xorg-core.

Where is the bug in this case?
In nvidia-graphics-drivers, I would say: otherwise, the bug report
should be reassigned elsewhere...

As a consequence, which is the package that the user should _not_
upgrade or install, in order to avoid being hit by the bug?
Again, nvidia-graphics-drivers.
And apt-listbugs correctly checks the bugs assigned to
nvidia-graphics-drivers, before the upgrade or the installation of this
package.

There's no use in stopping an upgrade or installation of
xserver-xorg-core because of a bug that merely affects this package:
it's the other package (nvidia-graphics-drivers) the only one which is
able to introduce the bug into the user's system.

In summary, as long as a bug report is correctly assigned to the
package that is actually responsible for the issue, this package is the
only one which should not be upgraded/installed, in order to avoid
introducing the bug into the system.

This means that apt-listbugs should ignore the "affects" field, when
run in "apt" mode. Which is exactly what it does.

As far as "apt-listbugs list <pkg>" is concerned, listing bugs that
merely affect <pkg> (while being assigned to a different package
<other_pkg>) is a bit troublesome: how does that combine with version
tracking?
What if the user issues "apt-listbugs list <pkg>/<version>"?
There's no indication about the version of <other_pkg>...
I am convinced that this would generate a bunch of unwanted "noise" in
the output of the "apt-listbugs list" command.

> I think this is a really good point of possible improvement. Anybody
> mind if I create a wishlist on apt-listbug?

I would probably tag this wishlist bug as "wontfix", for the reasons
explained above.
Thanks a lot anyway for trying to suggest a possible improvement!

I hope I expressed myself clearly enough.
Maybe I should add the above explanation
to /usr/share/doc/apt-listbugs/README.Debian.gz
Do you think that it would help in understanding why apt-listbugs
ignores the "affects" field?


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