Bug#1125317: apt: 'show -a' command shows the same outdated Description for all package versions

Michael Prokop <[email protected]> Sun, 22 Mar 2026 14:59:46 +0100

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.apt.devel
Message-ID	<2026-03-22T12-23-18__42500.199358777$1774188092$gmane$org@devnull.michael-prokop.at>

* Yuriy Darnobyt [Mon Jan 12, 2026 at 01:49:04PM +0000]:

> It happens we put package version also in the 'Description' field.
> And we noticed that when we list all available versions
> (via 'apt show openvpn-as -a' ) the Description is always the same.
> This is easy to track by comparing versions in the Description field in
> 'openvpn-as' package. All of them will have '3.0.1-84b60e70-Debian13'
> (which is not the latest btw).
>
> This issue is also reproducible on Ubuntu 24.04 with the apt version
> 2.8.3.
> But it is not reproducible on older distributives, like Debian 12 or
> Ubuntu 22.04
>
> Steps to reproduce:
>
>     DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive apt -y -qq install ca-certificates wget net-tools gnupg
>     mkdir -p /etc/apt/keyrings
>     wget https://packages.openvpn.net/as-repo-public.asc -qO /etc/apt/keyrings/as-repository.asc
>     uname -m
>     echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/as-repository.asc] http://packages.openvpn.net/as/debian trixie main" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/openvpn-as-repo.list
>     apt update
>     apt show openvpn-as -a

I also stumbled upon this, with apt v3.0.3 on trixie, because a
transitional package wasn't displayed as such, given the wrong
package description showed up.

It's not only about apt, also apt-cache is broken.

Further STR:

  podman run --pull=always --rm -i -t -v $(pwd)/:/code:rw debian:trixie bash

  apt --update -y install grml-keyring
  ln -s /usr/share/grml-keyring/grml.sources /etc/apt/sources.list.d/
  apt update
  apt-cache show grml-scripts  # displays unexpected package description
  sed -i 's/Suites: grml-stable grml-testing/Suites: grml-testing/' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/grml.sources
  apt-cache show grml-scripts  # only now displays the expected package description, as only the newest grml-scripts package version is available then

Proper output would be:

  # apt-cache show grml-scripts | grep Description:
  Description: transitional package
  Description: Collection of little tools

While we get:

  # apt-cache show grml-scripts | grep Description:
  Description: Collection of little tools
  Description: Collection of little tools

Same behavior also with apt v3.1.16 as present in current
testing/unstable.

regards
-mika-

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