No translated package descriptions for -updates repository

I see a commit comment that reads:

  * debian/apt.cron.daily:
    - source /etc/default/locale (if available) so that the
      apt-get update cron job fetches the right translated package
      descriptions

Probably this fixes your problem too, can you test it on Natty? If not, I will try so next week.

Hi Torsten,
It's difficult to test right now in natty since there are no packages in -updates yet, I'll have to wait until natty has been released and there are some updates available...
Also I don't think that the mentioned commit is related to this problem since the apt package on my maverick system already included this commit at the time I reported this bug.

Hi Pascal,

I agree with your assessment of the situation after taking a closer
look. It seems unlikely that the commit I quoted will influence the
situation.

Situation in Ubuntu 11.04 / natty:

$ LANG=C apt-cache policy evince
evince:
  Installed: 2.32.0-0ubuntu12.1
  Candidate: 2.32.0-0ubuntu12.1
  Version table:
 *** 2.32.0-0ubuntu12.1 0
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty-updates/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.32.0-0ubuntu12 0
        500 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages

$ apt-cache show evince
My locale is set to Dutch, above command returns English package descriptions for 2.32.0-0ubuntu12.1 from natty-updates and Dutch for 2.32.0-0ubuntu1 from the release repository as expected.

The archive should have a i18n directory for the natty-updates repository or apt should be adapted to use the translations from the release repository (natty) so translated package descriptions are displayed for updates too in apt-cache, software-center, synaptic, ...
I tested by copying /var/lib/apt/lists/be.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_i18n_Translation-nl to /var/lib/apt/lists/be.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty-updates_main_i18n_Translation-nl and then translated package descriptions are displayed.

s/2.32.0-0ubuntu1/2.32.0-0ubuntu12

I think this is essentially caused by bug 827941; although for existing -updates publications we'll probably need to copy things over by hand.

I've copied translation files to -updates for hardy, lucid, maverick, and precise, which were the releases where they had uncopied files available in -proposed. These will be available after the next publisher run.

Bug 827941 is now fixed, so it will not be necessary for us to do this by hand again, and thus I'm unsubscribing ubuntu-archive. The path to actually closing this bug probably involves some combination of:

 * upload ddtp-translations (i.e. the new copyable-to-updates package) to -proposed in all supported releases, and have it copied to -updates
 * as previously suggested, change apt to fall back to other pockets to acquire description translations

For APT this should be fixed, so setting status accordingly.

Basically, if a translation for the description-md5 of the package is available from any source it is used, provided that the attack-value of a wrongly translated description is pretty low - especially compared to the problem that you are already trusting the source enough to have it enabled and therefore get packages from there …

Of course, if the update includes a change to the description you still need a translation in -updates as we can't display old translations.

apt (0.8.16~exp5ubuntu14) precise; urgency=low

  [ David Kalnischkies ]
  * apt-pkg/pkgcachegen.cc:
    - refactor MergeList by creating -Group, -Package and -Version specialist
    - share description list between "same" versions (LP: #868977)
      This also means that descriptions are shared across archives now.
  * apt-pkg/pkgcache.cc:
    - always prefer "en" over "" for "en"-language regardless of cache-order
      (LP: #868977)
 -- Michael Vogt <email address hidden> Wed, 19 Oct 2011 16:22:31 +0200