Control: retitle -1 apt-listchanges: add a sanitise mode
Control: severity -1 normal
Control: tags -1 - moreinfo
Hey.
I've finally been so annoyed by this, that I've manually fixed it. ;-D
Anyone who suffers from a similar problem can solve it with something
like:
$ python3
Python 3.9.1+ (default, Jan 10 2021, 15:42:50)
[GCC 10.2.1 20201224] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from dbm import ndbm
>>> db=ndbm.open("/pathToList/listchanges", 'w')
>>> print(db["lvm2"])
b'2:1.02.48-2'
>>> db["lvm2"] = b'2.03.10-1'
>>> print(db["util-linux"])
b'1:2.17.2-3.1'
>>> db["util-linux"] = b'2.36.1-4'
>>> db.close()
>>>
That is, resetting the seen versions to what's actually installed on
the system.
/pathToList/listchanges (sic! - no .db, apparently) is typically
"/var/lib/apt/listchanges".
Make a backup in advance!
1) As for that,... there really should be a --sanitise option or so,
which takes the db and for every entry in it sets the seen version to
the one currently installed.
2) Maybe there should be even something like --garbage-collect, which
removes any seen entries for which the package no longer <something>.
Well, what should <something> be?
a) Just taking packages no longer installed (locally) would be one way,
but maybe people would re-install them later and still skip the already
seen changes.
b) Perhaps any package which can no longer be found in the currently
configured repos?
Ideally, the user could choose, and would be presented with a list of
all entries to be removed, which he can then either take all, or
selectively walk through.
Cheers,
Chris.
