[Bug 1803162] Re: non-dpkg information and broken format in manifest

[Scott Moser]

@Steve,
"We have never represented the .manifest to be a public machine-parseable interface."

Thats clearly not true. Machine-formatted content (the .manifest)
advertised in a machine-formatted index (streams) is quite reasonable to
be expected to be machine parseable.

One example of something that parses that information is 'mfdiff'.  I do
not know for sure, but I suspect it was broken.  Anyone wanting to
determine if a specific/fixed version of a package would have come to
the decision to parse this file.

@Dimitri,
Changing the number of fields in a record of a tab delimited file and *additionally* changing the meaning of an existing field is not backwards compatible.


@Both,
Why not do this right?  Add a .manifest.json file.  You can determine the format of the file.


** Changed in: cloud-images
       Status: Incomplete => New

** Changed in: livecd-rootfs (Ubuntu)
       Status: Incomplete => New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1803162

Title:
  non-dpkg information and broken format in manifest

Status in cloud-images:
  New
Status in livecd-rootfs package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Ubuntu images have been accompanied by a 'manifest' file since at least 10.04.
  This manifest file was a list of the dpkg installed packages and their versions.
  The format was as output by dpkg-query --show.
  That format was
    package-name<tab>version

  The offending change was added at
  https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-core-dev/livecd-rootfs/trunk/revision/1706

  The disco images now contain non-dpkg information in them.
  There are a few problems with this:
   a.) the format is now changed.  Some lines will now have 3 fields rather than 2.
   b.) content is not strictly a list of dpkg information.

  I understand the desire to have pre-seeded snap information in this file
  but believe that the correct way to add representation of that information
  is with new files rather extending in non-backwards compatible ways an
  existing file.

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