Bug#874772: exim4: Use of /var/lib/apt/lists internals

[Julian Andres Klode]

On Sun, Sep 10, 2017 at 11:58:46AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Sat, Sep 09, 2017 at 04:39:23PM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> > On 2017-09-09 Julian Andres Klode <jak at debian.org> wrote:
> > > Package: exim4
> > > Severity: important
> > > User: deity at lists.debian.org
> > > Usertags: apt-internals
> > 
> > > Dear Maintainer of exim4,
> > 
> > > your package appears to be relying on the internal layout of
> > > /var/lib/apt/lists and the location of that directory (which is
> > [...]
> > > Instead of relying on internals, please use the interfaces provided by
> > > APT 1.1 and newer:
> > [...]
> > > ## Command-line interfaces
> > [...]
> > 
> > Thanks for the nice explanation to fix the issue. Fixed in GIT.
> 
> Wouldn't
> 
> grep-aptavail --show-field=Package --field=Provides mail-transport-agent
> --no-field-names
> 
> be a nicer solution than the construct that you committed? or is
> grep-aptavail also deprecated?

Yes, that would work (as long as you don't pass file names to it),
it's equivalent to apt-helper cat-file <all packages files> | grep-dctrl.
I forgot about grep-aptavail when writing the bug reports.

I'm thinking about opening a wishlist bug for grep-dctrl to generally
handle compressed files as arguments, I think that would be nice too.

-- 
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