Bug#1015794: behaviour of ?archive pattern inconsistent with aptitude

[Sébastien Villemot <sebastien@debian.org>]

Package: apt
Version: 2.5.1
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,

I noticed that the ?archive pattern does not behave the same in apt as in
aptitude.

My system has both unstable and experimental suites enabled (see below
debian.sources).

When I run:

  aptitude versions '~i~Aexperimental'

I get a list of those installed package versions that effectively come from
experimental (8 in total on my system, in particular I use GCC 12 by default):

Package cpp:                                               
i A 4:12-20211211-1                                                                             experimental                                                             100

Package g++:
i   4:12-20211211-1                                                                             experimental                                                             100

…

However, when I run:

  apt list '~i~Aexperimental'

I get a list of 297 packages. It seems to include all the installed packages
for which a more recent version exists in experimental, independently of
whether I installed that more recent version or not. For example, the output
contains:

 wfrench/unstable,now 1.2.6-1 all [installed,automatic]

wfrench 1.2.6-1 actually comes from unstable, but there is indeed a 1.2.7-1
currently in experimental (which I did not install).

This behaviour seems to contradict the documentation, so I guess it is not
intended (or the documentation should probably be clarified otherwise, and this
be added to the incompatibilites with aptitude).

Thanks for your work,

Sébastien Villemot



-- Package-specific info:

-- (no /etc/apt/preferences present) --


-- (no /etc/apt/preferences.d/* present) --


-- (no /etc/apt/sources.list present) --


-- /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.sources --

Types: deb deb-src
URIs: http://deb.debian.org/debian
Suites: unstable experimental
Components: main contrib non-free
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg

-- System Information:
Debian Release: bookworm/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 5.18.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/16 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.utf8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii  adduser                 3.122
ii  debian-archive-keyring  2021.1.1
ii  gpgv                    2.2.35-3
ii  libapt-pkg6.0           2.5.1
ii  libc6                   2.33-8
ii  libgcc-s1               12.1.0-7
ii  libgnutls30             3.7.6-2
ii  libseccomp2             2.5.4-1
ii  libstdc++6              12.1.0-7
ii  libsystemd0             251.3-1

Versions of packages apt recommends:
ii  ca-certificates  20211016

Versions of packages apt suggests:
ii  apt-doc         2.5.1
ii  aptitude        0.8.13-4
ii  dpkg-dev        1.21.9
ii  gnupg           2.2.35-3
ii  gnupg2          2.2.35-3
ii  powermgmt-base  1.36
ii  synaptic        0.91.2

-- no debconf information