[Bug 1076237] Re: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal creates comment with invalid # character

[David Kalnischkies]

Just for the record: APT really supports # as comments as a convenience:

apt (0.7.22) unstable; urgency=low
…
  * [ABI break] support '#' in apt.conf and /etc/apt/preferences
    (closes: #189866)
…
 -- Michael Vogt <mvo at debian.org>  Wed, 29 Jul 2009 19:16:22 +0200

I really don't get why everyone thinks config file parsing is so damn cool that it must be reimplemented everywhere. I guess I have to try it some time. Sounds like a lot of fun.
Unnecessary to mention that aptdaemon will fail on other for-APT-valid config files also, like these including #clear option; and this time there is not even an excuse as this syntax is present since ever. Even though it might be hard to give a valid excuse provided the copyright year of config.py is 2010 … Oh dear …

My python is to limited, but from a first look it seems like it
incorporates quiet a few issues like parsing/editing files which aren't
parsed by APT (e.g. config.dpkg-new), #clear, #include, #-comments, …

(yes, I know that aptdaemon "needs" it to rewrite the configuration file
as nobody has implemented it in libapt-pkg – properly because it sounds
like so much fun – but I still don't get why because you could just
append a new line to file to set a different value …)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1076237

Title:
   /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal creates comment with invalid
  # character

Status in “apt” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal does:

  cat > "$config_file".dpkg-new <<EOF
  # File autogenerated by $0, do not edit
  APT
  {
  [...]

  But apt does not seem to accept that. This is exposed by the current
  aptdaemon autopkgtest failure in
  https://jenkins.qa.ubuntu.com/view/Raring/view/AutoPkgTest/job/raring-
  adt-aptdaemon/lastFailedBuild/ARCH=i386,label=albali/ :

  =====================================================================
  ERROR: test_ (tests.test_configparser.ConfigurationParserTestCase)
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/tmp/tmp.dHacB3CTL5/dsc0-build/aptdaemon-0.45+bzr861/tests/test_configparser.py", line 63, in test_
      config = self.parser.parse(fd.readlines())
    File "/tmp/tmp.dHacB3CTL5/dsc0-build/aptdaemon-0.45+bzr861/aptdaemon/config.py", line 156, in parse
      raise Exception("Unknown char '%s' in: %s" % (char, line))
  Exception: Unknown char '#' in: # File autogenerated by /etc/kernel/postinst.d/apt-auto-removal, do not edit

  man apt.conf also just documents // and /* .. */ as valid comments,
  not #.

  I think this apt script should be fixed to write a // comment instead
  of a # comment. Or should aptdaemon/apt accept # as well?

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