Package: aptitude Version: 0.4.11.11-1+b2 Followup-For: Bug #509974 Trent W. Buck wrote: > As package names are always lowercase, perhaps aptitude should > lowercase requested package names?
AOL. Aptitude's behaviour with strings that it doesn't immediately recognise as package names is a bit bizarre. Let's imagine I want to install the amanda backup server. If I ask to "aptitude install amanda", this runs into the problem that there's no such binary package name. As a fallback aptitude tries to find packages I might have meant by searching for the string "amanda" in package descriptions, but as it happens this also fails: root:~# aptitude install amanda Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done No candidate version found for amanda No candidate version found for amanda No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed. [...] I have no idea why it seems to happen twice, there. I might have guessed that one of these attempts might have been a search on just package names... except that it didn't find "amanda-server". Or maybe I would guess that the second search included source packages... except that it misses the one named "amanda" (as in "aptitude build-dep amanda", which works). I don't see anything about this behaviour in aptitude-doc. If I ask to install Amanda, on the other hand, the search successfully matches some packages that happen to have that exact capitalised string in their descriptions: root:~# aptitude install Amanda Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done Couldn't find any package matching "Amanda". However, the following packages contain "Amanda" in their description: amanda-server chiark-backup mtx amanda-client Couldn't find any package matching "Amanda". However, the following packages contain "Amanda" in their description: amanda-server chiark-backup mtx amanda-client No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed. [...] In the case of amanda, searching case-sensitively for the capitalised name finds the packages I was looking for, but it isn't much help with, for instance, apache2: root:~# aptitude install Apache2 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Reading extended state information Initializing package states... Done Couldn't find any package matching "Apache2". However, the following packages contain "Apache2" in their description: libapache2-mod-auth-sys-group libapache2-mod-rpaf libapache2-mod-proxy-html libapache2-mod-ruby libapache2-authcassimple-perl libapache2-mod-ocamlnet libapache2-reload-perl libapache2-mod-perl2-dev libapache2-mod-auth-pgsql libapache2-mod-perl2-doc libapache2-authenntlm-perl libapache2-mod-auth-openid libapache-ruby1.8 libapache2-mod-auth-plain libembperl-perl libapache2-mod-suphp libapache2-mod-encoding libapache2-mod-defensible libapache2-mod-speedycgi libapache2-mod-perl2 libapache2-mod-auth-pam libapache2-mod-gnutls libapache2-mod-lisp libapache2-mod-mime-xattr libfile-mmagic-xs-perl Couldn't find any package matching "Apache2". However, the following packages contain "Apache2" in their description: libapache2-mod-auth-sys-group libapache2-mod-rpaf [...etc, as above...] libapache2-mod-mime-xattr libfile-mmagic-xs-perl No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed. [...] (Notice that apache2 itself isn't on that list.) Wouldn't it make more sense to replace one of those package description searches with a "normalised" name lookup and/or case-insensitive search? -- System Information: Debian Release: squeeze/sid APT prefers testing APT policy: (500, 'testing'), (50, 'unstable') Architecture: i386 (i686) Kernel: Linux 2.6.33.custom Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Versions of packages aptitude depends on: ii apt [libapt-pkg-libc6.9 0.7.25.3 Advanced front-end for dpkg ii libc6 2.10.2-6 Embedded GNU C Library: Shared lib ii libcwidget3 0.5.16-3 high-level terminal interface libr ii libept0 0.5.30 High-level library for managing De ii libgcc1 1:4.4.2-9 GCC support library ii libncursesw5 5.7+20090803-2 shared libraries for terminal hand ii libsigc++-2.0-0c2a 2.2.4.2-1 type-safe Signal Framework for C++ ii libstdc++6 4.4.2-9 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 ii libxapian15 1.0.18-1 Search engine library ii zlib1g 1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3 compression library - runtime Versions of packages aptitude recommends: ii aptitude-doc-en [aptitude-do 0.4.11.11-1 English manual for aptitude, a ter ii libparse-debianchangelog-per 1.1.1-2 parse Debian changelogs and output Versions of packages aptitude suggests: ii debtags 1.7.9+b2 Enables support for package tags pn tasksel <none> (no description available) -- no debconf information -- JBR Ankh kak! (Ancient Egyptian blessing) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
