rmadison alternative 'pkg-versions'

[Simon Quigley]

Hi Bryce and Skia,

On 3/17/25 03:22 PM, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> A few people have mentioned having problems using rmadison recently, and
> enquired about a little reimplementation I made a bit ago.  I figure in
> case others are interested I'd throw out a PSA about it:
> 
>      https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-server/+git/ubuntu-helpers/tree/bryce/pkg-versions
> 
> It is a lot faster (for me) than rmadison, because it pulls data from
> qa.debian.org rather than people.canonical.com; the former server is in
> the PNW near me.  European folks have not seen this performance benefit,
> so YMMV.
> 
> The script is written in Bash, rather than Perl as rmadison is.  It
> requires curl and distro-info as dependencies, but those should already
> be on everyone's system, so you should be able to plop the script
> somewhere in your $PATH, and go.

No qualms, I appreciate the work, but as a long-term goal, we might want to discuss porting to a compiled language.

I don't want the pitchforks and torches, so I won't go as far as to boldly suggest Rust, so I'll say C++.

> I've also changed the default output to be more immediately useful for
> my own needs:  It includes Debian package versions, and excludes older
> ESM releases.  Example output:
> 
>      $ pkg-versions dovecot
>      ### Debian ###
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.19.1+dfsg1-2.1+deb12u1 | bookworm-security
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.19.1+dfsg1-2.1+deb12u1 | bookworm
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.21.1+dfsg1-1~bpo12+1   | bookworm-backports
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.21.1+dfsg1-1           | trixie
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.21.1+dfsg1-1           | sid
>      dovecot | 1:2.4.0+dfsg1-1~exp3         | experimental
>      dovecot | 1:2.4.0+dfsg1-1~exp4         | experimental
> 
>      ### Ubuntu ###
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.7.2-1ubuntu3           | focal
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.7.2-1ubuntu3.7         | focal-security
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.7.2-1ubuntu3.7         | focal-updates
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.16+dfsg1-3ubuntu2      | jammy
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.16+dfsg1-3ubuntu2.4    | jammy-security
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.16+dfsg1-3ubuntu2.4    | jammy-updates
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.21+dfsg1-2ubuntu5      | noble
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.21+dfsg1-2ubuntu6      | noble-security
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.21+dfsg1-2ubuntu6      | noble-updates
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.21.1+dfsg1-1ubuntu1    | oracular
>      dovecot | 1:2.3.21.1+dfsg1-1ubuntu2    | plucky
> 
> There's just one command line option, --devel, which limits to just the
> devel release and debian, useful for checking for new syncs/merges:
> 
>      $ ~/bin/pkg-versions openldap --devel
>      openldap | 2.5.19+dfsg-1            | sid
>      openldap | 2.6.9+dfsg-2             | sid
>      openldap | 2.6.9+dfsg-1~exp2ubuntu1 | plucky
> 
> 
> It's pretty bare bones beyond that; I've not implemented the many other
> options and functionalities that rmadison provides.  Patches are welcome
> though, and I'll take feature requests.  There's been one request to add
> support for looking up binary packages.
> 
> Anyway, hope pkg-versions is helpful and I'd love to hear if it is.

I can think of a few bugs that could be addressed by this long-term: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?repeatmerged=no&src=ubuntu-dev-tools

I still need to take some time to investigate this deeply, but you've piqued my interest, and I'd love to hear a followup soon.

On 3/18/25 10:59 AM, Florent 'Skia' Jacquet wrote:
 > Le 17/03/2025 à 21:22, Bryce Harrington a écrit :
 >> Anyway, hope pkg-versions is helpful and I'd love to hear if it is.
 >
 > Yes it is, thank you very much! Here, have some fast emojis: ⚡🚀🏎️

⚡🚀🏎️ 🔊🔊🔊

 > I'd say it's worth being more broadly pushed to `ubuntu-dev-tools` or else, but I'll let you be the judge of that.

Strong +1.

Thanks,
-- 
Simon Quigley
simon at tsimonq2.net
@tsimonq2:ubuntu.com on Matrix
tsimonq2 on LiberaChat and OFTC
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