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[3/15/2008]

Version 0.4.11

When you're tired of being beat with a stick, you're tired of Debian.

• New features:

  • Search terms can be named with words instead of single-character flags. Each new-style search expression starts with a question mark (?), followed by the name of the matcher; for instance, ?obsolete is equivalent to the old-style expression ~o. At the command-line, package names containing question marks are treated as search expressions, just like package names containing tildes (~) are.

    The old-style syntax is still present and works just like it did previously. See the reference manual for complete documentation of the new syntax.

    This will hopefully make the search syntax more memorable and make it clearer what a given search expression actually does. In addition, this opens up the possibility of greatly expanding the number of search patterns supported by aptitude (the requirement to choose a meaningful and unique single character had become a major limiting factor in the ability to add new search terms).

  • New search terms:

    New search terms added to aptitude 0.4.11

    Term	Meaning
    ?source-package(expr)	matches packages whose source package matches the given regular expression.
    ?source-version(expr)	matches packages whose source version matches the given regular expression.
    ?all-versions(expr)	matches a package if expr matches all versions of that package.
    ?any-version(expr)	matches a package if expr matches any single version of that package.
    ?user-tag(pattern)	matches a package if it has an attached user-tag matching the given regexp (see below).
    ?for var: expr	binds var inside expr to the package or version being tested.
    ?bind(var, expr)	matches anything if the package or version bound to var matches expr.
    ?=var	matches the package or version bound to var by an enclosing ?for.

    For instance, ?for x: ?depends(?recommends(?=x)) will match any package X that depends on a package that recommends X.

  • aptitude now supports attaching arbitrary strings to packages, known as user tags (to distinguish them from debtags tags). The following commands will manipulate user tags:

    aptitude add-user-tag    tag package...
    aptitude remove-user-tag tag package...
    

    Each of these commands will add user tags to or remove them from one or more packages (possibly selected using search expressions). In addition, all command-line actions that modify package state now take the following optional arguments:

    --add-user-tag         TAG
    --add-user-tag-to      TAG PATTERN
    --remove-user-tag      TAG
    --remove-user-tag-from TAG PATTERN
    

    The variants that take a PATTERN will add tags to or remove tags from any packages that match the given PATTERN. (e.g.: --add-user-tag-to installed-for-build-dep ?action(install)). The variants that do not take a PATTERN will affect any package that is being modified (this is equivalent to using the pattern ?not(?action(keep))).

    The ?user-tag(tag) matcher will select packages with a tag matching the given regular expression. User tags also show up at the end of package descriptions, next to the list of debtags tags for a package.

  • All command-line actions that modify package state now accept the arguments --safe-resolver and --full-resolver. --safe-resolver forces the command to use the same resolver logic as --safe-upgrade (e.g., aptitude install --safe-resolver exim4 to install exim4 as long as it can be installed without removing any packages). --safe-resolver can be enabled in the config file by setting Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver to true; passing --full-resolver will override this configuration option.

    The option --no-new-installs and the new option --no-new-upgrades will control whether the safe resolver attempts to install new packages or upgrade installed packages.

    Future versions of aptitude will enable this logic in the curses UI as well, but I haven't decided how it should be exposed yet.

  • The aptitude dependency resolver will now refuse to adjust held packages or install forbidden versions unless you manually allow it to. This behavior can be disabled by setting Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Allow-Break-Holds to false.

    aptitude will still break holds when packages are being automatically installed; there is a pending patch against apt that eliminates this behavior.

  • The aptitude dependency resolver will add a bonus to solutions that remove a package and install another package that fully replaces it by declaring a conflicts/provides/replaces relationship. (Closes: bug #466374)

  • aptitude now has a build-dep command that will install build-dependencies from the command-line. (Closes: bug #243317)

  • A new subdirs variant of the section grouping policy is introduced in this release, courtesy of Paul Donahue, and is enabled by default. This will behave just like the old sectioning policy, except that if a section has several components (for instance, games/arcade/space), they will all be realized as tree levels in aptitude.

    A side effect of this change is that section descriptions are no longer hard-coded in the source (see the documentation of Aptitude::Sections::Descriptions).

  • Command-line updates in aptitude will now list packages that are newly obsolete. This doesn't work when a source is removed and all its packages become obsolete, for technical reasons.

  • aptitude now uses libept to handle debtags information instead of a slow and wrong internal implementation. (Closes: bug #397652, bug #406201) aptitude update will merge new package information into the debtags database automatically by running debtags update --local.

• Bug fixes:

  • Cosmetic and UI bugs:

    • The curses interface now uses a spinner to indicate download progress, since the percentage measurement can't be made correct in the current apt model.

    • Remove some stray cw:: strings that made it into user-visible messages (thanks to Jacobo Tarrio for pointing them out).

    • Interpret %-escapes in the descriptions of configuration options instead of displaying them to the user; thanks to Jens Seidel for pointing this out.

    • At the command-line prompt, don't list packages that aren't being upgraded unless the user tried to upgrade them. e.g., aptitude install foo will no longer spew the entire list of pending upgrades to the terminal.

    • When displaying dependencies or version numbers at the command-line (i.e., -D or -V is passed), add an extra space between packages, to make it a little more obvious which tags belong to which package.

    • If the resolver is allowed to produce the solution 'cancel all actions' (i.e., Aptitude::ProblemResolver::Discard-Null-Solution is false), the brief indicator in the UI will say that it cancels all the pending actions instead of counting its component actions.

    • When displaying the packages that could satisfy a versioned dependency, don't list packages that provide the package name unless they declare a versioned provides that matches the dependency's version restriction. (Closes: bug #464131)

    • Don't try to generate and then parse a matcher when searching for packages that look like what the user typed; instead, write explicit code to compare against package names and descriptions.

    This allows aptitude to find similar package names even if the corresponding command-line argument is an invalid search pattern (without having to write complex escaping logic); e.g., aptitude install +5 does something sensible instead of printing a confusing error message.

    • If the user enters q during command-line dependency resolution, quit the program instead of falling back to manual resolution; manual resolution is only used if automatic resolution hits a fatal error or if the user requests it by typing x. (Closes: bug #459629)

  • Translation bugs:

    • Generate POTFILES.in automatically, so it stays up-to-date without requiring manual intervention.

    • Flag W_() as a translation marker; failure to do this caused a lot of strings to be incorrectly left out of the translation files; pointed out by Jens Seidel.

    • Fix translation of strings displayed by the options editor (they weren't getting translated at all); thanks to Jens Seidel for reporting this.

  • Minor bugs:

    • Fix task handling in the case that different versions of a package are in different tasks. (Closes: bug #459348)

    • safe-upgrade will now attempt to automatically maximize the upgrade. Hopefully this will eliminate the situation where you run aptitude safe-upgrade and then discover that there are still some upgradable packages.

  • Crashes and serious errors:

    • aptitude will now build with g++ 4.3, assuming that 4.3-compatible versions of cwidget and sigc++ are installed. (Closes: bug #452204, bug #452540)

    • Reduce the translation percent threshold for the various versions of the manual until it compiles. (Closes: bug #470054)

    • aptitude now uses Apt::Install-Recommends instead of Aptitude::Recommends-Important to control whether recommendations are automatically installed. (Closes: bug #458189, bug #448561) Old configurations will be migrated to the new configuration option, if possible.

    Among other things, this means that --without-recommends works again (it was broken when recommends handling moved to apt).

    • Ensure the resolver state is always synchronized with the package cache, eliminating some cases where the resolver would break or produce wrong answers. (Closes: bug #421395, bug #432411)

    • Don't crash at the command-line when displaying the version numbers of packages being removed that don't have an installation candidate; also, the version display for removed packages is now meaningful. (Closes: bug #459336)

    • Don't crash at the command-line when displaying the version numbers of packages in the ConfigFiles state that are being purged; instead, display Config Files as the removed version. (Closes: bug #461669)

    As a side note: the code in question has been adjusted to be robust against bad version pointers, and should display ?? instead. If you see this, it's a bug, but at least aptitude won't crash in this case.

    • Don't crash in aptitude update when the package lists can't be parsed for some reason; instead just go ahead and download new ones. (Closes: bug #468751)

  • Documentation bugs:

    • Fix the documented default keybinding for PrevPage.

    • The documentation of searching has been substantially rewritten, and is hopefully much more useful now. In particular, there's more information about how versions are handled, and a concise table listing all the search expressions supported by aptitude.

    • Document some of the files aptitude uses in a FILES section in the manpage (Closes: bug #470839).

  • Translation updates:

    • Basque

    • French

      • Christian Perrier: Fix the use of quote in the French translation (Closes: bug #460808).

    • Galician

    • German (thanks to Jens Seidel)

    • Japanese (thanks to Noritada Kobayashi)

    • Norwegian Bokmål

    • Portuguese

    • Romanian (thanks to Eddy Petrișor)

    • Russian

    • Simplified Chinese

    • Slovak

    • Spanish

    • Vietnamese