[Bug 1990856] [NEW] Does not consider all versions in Packages files

[Launchpad Bug Tracker]

You have been subscribed to a public bug by Julian Andres Klode (juliank):

Some implementations of apt mirror metadata generation generate Packages
files which are not alpha-sorted by package name.  apt and britney2
handle these files without issue, but debootstrap does not: it will only
consider the first contiguous run of stanzas for a package (taking the
last stanza as the latest).

When running debootstrap against a mirror with such Packages files,
debootstrap can fail to resolve versioned dependencies which _are_
present in the Packages file, if the satisfying package version isn't
within the first contiguous run of stanzas for that package.  This leads
to avoidable bootstrap failures.  (The specific case we hit: each
e2fsprogs package Pre-Depends on the libext2fs2 package with the same
version: `dpkg --predep-package` finds the newer e2fsprogs version and
reports that libext2fs2 needs installing, but debootstrap has already
installed (the old) libext2fs2 so errors out.)

The problem lies in the pkgdetails_field function (which is implemented
in Perl):
https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/debootstrap/tree/functions#n1439.
It takes a list of expected packages and, once it has found a version
for all of them, exits (even if there is more of the Packages file to
process).  It does already have special-casing for multiple versions of
the same package, but only if they are a contiguous run.  (That
behaviour was introduced by cjwatson in 1.0.38[0] to fix
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=649319: that bug
report also has useful background info on why multiple versions of a
package in metadata should be supported).

[0] https://salsa.debian.org/installer-
team/debootstrap/-/commit/0fbf86aa8fbcd06cb62fddddcfd4605fef2ee8b2

** Affects: debootstrap (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: patch rls-kk-incoming
-- 
Does not consider all versions in Packages files
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1990856
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