Package: software-properties-common Version: 0.96.20.2-2.1rb1 Severity: normal X-Debbugs-Cc: rossboy...@stanfordalumni.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA512 **Garbled** The REPOSITORY STRING section of the man page refers to 3 forms. Usually I would expect a "form" to be a particular form of the command line in the SYNOPSIS, but there is only a single form given there. The REPOSITORY STRING section, in the first sentence, says that REPOSITORY can either be a line in the form ppa:... or a distribution component. That's 2 alternatives. Which also doesn't match 3 forms. The first sentence says ppa: is added directly to sources.list, with a link to that man page. But the sources.list man page has no references to ppa's (which is probably why a couple of sentences later says that ppa: specifications are rewritten before insertion to sources.list). If we try to interpret the subsequent discussion of forms as relating to this, we have the problem that there are 2 alternatives but 3 forms. And the second form is a ppa, even though that was the first alternative in the opening sentence. And the paragraph about the "second form" says the ppa will be expanded, but the opening description says it is "a line that can be added directly". **Confusing** It is not clear to me what is meant by a "distribution component", and I don't know what it means that it will be "enabled for all sources". There is a --massive-debug option, described as "print a lot of debug information." It doesn't, at least when adding a repository. And the addition of a ppa doesn't actually work, but that's a separate issue: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1012649 - --remove turns this command from "add" to "subtract". Using add-xxx to remove is a bit confusing and surprising, though not unprecedented. Perhaps a rm-apt- repository command could be added as a symlink, with the usual tricks so that behavior of the program depends on how it's invoked. **Incomplete** When adding a ppa to sources.list a release gets inserted as well. It was "kinetic" for all the ones I tried, including one repository that didn't have anything for the kinetic release. The insertion of a release seems worth mentioning along with how the release is chosen and how, if at all, one can alter the choice. Perhaps this the "distribution component" referred to earlier? **Speculation** The exact opening of the garbled section is REPOSITORY can be either a line that can be added directly to sources.list(5), in the form ppa:<user>/<ppa-name> for adding Personal Package Archives, or a distribution component to enable. The material between commas, starting with "in the form ppa:" appears to be an appositive, a way of rephrasing that which came before it (actually it restricts the meaning). Given the previously noted fact that the thing before (line that can be added directly) means something different from a ppa, I think the intended meaning is REPOSITORY can take 3 forms 1. a line that can be added directly to sources.list 2. ppa:<user>/<ppa-name> for adding Personal Package Archives 3. a distribution component to enable. Then the 3 forms discussed in the rest of this section refer to those 3 alternatives, in that order. This interpretation/rewrite resolves most of the issues in the **Garbled** section, although it might be better if the SYNOPSIS actually did show 3 forms directly. - -- System Information: Debian Release: 11.3 APT prefers stable-security APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 5.10.0-15-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU threads) Kernel taint flags: TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE, TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (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 software-properties-common depends on: ii ca-certificates 20210119 ii gir1.2-glib-2.0 1.66.1-1+b1 ii gir1.2-packagekitglib-1.0 1.2.2-2 ii python-apt-common 2.2.1 ii python3 3.9.2-3 ii python3-dbus 1.2.16-5 ii python3-gi 3.38.0-2 ii python3-software-properties 0.96.20.2-2.1rb1 Versions of packages software-properties-common recommends: ii packagekit 1.2.2-2 software-properties-common suggests no packages. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQFSBAEBCgA8FiEEreS674/HIyV9gBfdnAYPmOsbK2AFAmKqeHYeHHJvc3Nib3ls YW5Ac3RhbmZvcmRhbHVtbmkub3JnAAoJEJwGD5jrGytg++UH/0eJe1VMqT3iuvkS Vu3GcCldZofsuE9t+/uqfvnpXOhO50U/oJR8JUYA3uPHKxC5l7fQ2t/DcjTFWQ73 kliPkOGlYkGYNif+xgoOd68joShDl7MA9DZggRvghGjzj1nMeQ3gPbnbn0Y1guRh br0l65Ypp1xicfT7M8050EPYapEBqFZexlmoVnzcT7Ub18IoiLi9iKAlYcnroYjz dyrEQFJvAaZWWsCNrW1g27fa2wLjzWmBBmgESVkdEODp2ZzZxOnvlVrOKM9VEWRj EEGtu6/DCWqjE5oTQnG571uzTqfAnhgcp4DmT4E8AkwhXQmUjOmFooz6LEdQHsol WGR2hzk= =u0JB -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
