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SebMa
Asked: 2020-09-04 05:36:55 +0800 CST

aptitude search cannot display origin nor sources nor architecture of installed packages

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I'm trying to list all packages (and their respective repositories) from other sources than the main/restricted/universe/multiverse.

First I've typed that command to list those packages :

$ aptitude search -F '%p' '!?origin(Ubuntu) ( ?architecture(amd64) | ?architecture(all) ) ?installed' | head
albert                                                                          
brave-browser                                                                   
brave-keyring                                                                   
browsh                                                                          
cdda2wav                                                                        
cdrecord                                                                        
dockmanager                                                                     
e2fsprogs-l10n                                                                  
ffmbc                                                                           
firefox-esr

But if I add '%e' or '%E' or '%O' to the -F argument, the aptitude immediately returns ... nothing :

$ aptitude search -F '%p %O' '!?origin(Ubuntu) ( ?architecture(amd64) | ?architecture(all) ) ?installed' | head
$

Is this an aptitude bug ?

aptitude 16.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Looking at the changelog from my 18.04 box, I can see:

    aptitude (0.7.5-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New upstream release. Please see /usr/share/aptitude/NEWS for a change
    log with more details.

    - New features:
<snip>
      * Add format strings for Source (%E), Architecture (%e) and
        Origin (%O) (Closes: #248561, #604982, #760608)
<snip>

    The version of aptitude in 16.04 appears to be 0.7.4, predating these additions.

    So it looks like your aptitude search -F '%p %e' ... command is (rather unsportingly) simply bailing when it gets a format specifier that it doesn't understand.

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