On Sat, Jun 20, 2015 at 02:58:57AM +0000, Brian May wrote:
As dselect is so old, I don't think it supports this mechanism. It might in fact use /var/lib/dpkg/available, as mentioned here. This is, I believe, a legacy file.
I am not sure what is responsible for updating /var/lib/dpkg/available. It is possible that the mechanism is broken, because dselect is considered legacy, and nobody noticed that it broke.
I might have suggested that only dselect updates this file, however I notice I have this file, even though I have never used dselect. dselect might update this file automatically on start, based on this thread it looks like it doesn't.
dpkg uses this file, as well as /var/lib/dpkg/status because apt, like dselect, and all other tools for listing, installing, uninstalling, etc debian packages use dpkg, they all ultimately use /var/lib/dpkg/status. some also use /var/lib/dpkg/available (but that file is less important than it was in the mid-90s before apt arrived) when packages are installed, upgraded, removed, held/unheld, or purged these files are updated. /var/lib/dpkg/available is NOT a legacy file....it's not vitally important because it's easily rebuilt (unlike /var/lib/dpkg/status which is crucially important - lose that and you lose all information about installed packages on your system) but it's still in use. i used to use dselect for package selection and installation a long time ago. i stopped when the number of packages available became too many to want to wade through them. now i just install the debian base system plus some task selections and carefully chosen packages with 'apt-get install'. i still run 'dselect update' to update my packages list (configured to use apt as the method) partly out of long-standing habit and partly for convenience with bash history - i don't use dselect for anything else so typing '!dsel' into bash is guarranteed to run 'dselect update ; apt-get -V -d -u dist-upgrade' whereas running '!apt' could do anything, depending on what i last did with apt-get (or aptitude or apt-cache or apt-whatever). craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>