[ubuntu-dev] Bug#712200: gdebi-core: gdebi fails in an obscure way if the package list is out of date

[Francois Gouget]

Package: gdebi-core
Version: 0.9
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

So in the course of installing dependencies gdebi tried to download a package which is no longer available in the repository. The problem is somewhat clear if running the text version if one knows what a 404 error is and what could cause it.

However if using gdebi-gtk or gdebi-kde the user has no indication as to what went wrong except that not all required files could be downloaded and this recommendation:

   Please check your internet connection or installation medium.

In fact the fix is to run 'sudo apt-get update'. But the GUI tools provide no way of doing this (one has to know to look for the right entry in the desktop menus). The thing is that since these GUI tools are supposed to be used by novices, they should really take care of such details. 

One approach would be to perform the 'apt-get update' before starting the installation whenever some part of the package list is more than 12 hours old. I have no idea how to do so though.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: jessie/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages gdebi-core depends on:
ii  file           1:5.14-2
ii  python         2.7.3-5
ii  python-apt     0.8.9
ii  python-debian  0.1.21+nmu2

gdebi-core recommends no packages.

Versions of packages gdebi-core suggests:
ii  xz-utils  5.1.1alpha+20120614-2

-- no debconf information