add-apt-repository should return exit code and not adding wrong repositories

[Narcis Garcia]

(Ubuntu 9.10)
Running:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xxxxx
echo $?

In most cases zero error is shown, also when repository doesn't exist or there isn't network connection.

Additionally, on both error cases, the repository is added anyway.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. I have classified this bug as a bug in python-software-properties.

When reporting bugs in the future please use apport, either via the appropriate application's "Help -> Report a Problem" menu or using 'ubuntu-bug' and the name of the package affected. You can learn more about this functionality at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs. (you can find out what package a command belongs to with 'dpkg -S $(which <command>)' )

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

Confirmed. The exit code is not !=0 when an error occurs and even though you actually get an error message like
Error reading https://launchpad.net/api/beta/~bxlsjs/+archive/sds: HTTP Error 404: Not Found
is given, the file
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/bxlsjs-sds-lucid.list
is created anyway.

[Philip Muškovac (yofel)]

$ apt-cache policy python-software-properties
python-software-properties:
  Installed: 0.75.5
  Candidate: 0.75.5
  Version table:
 *** 0.75.5 0
        600 http://archive.ubuntu.com lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[C de-Avillez (hggdh2)]

Resetting to Medium importance (from WishList) -- this is really a bug

[Narcis Garcia (narcisgarcia)]

I'll take care about the apt-query command the next time.
Thanks.

[H.-Dirk Schmitt (dirk-computer42)]

In the current state it can't be used in a reliable way by other scripts.

[pode (autrelandes-ubuntu)]

The reason of the bug is that :
1. In softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py, a thread is created

  def check_and_add_key_for_whitelisted_channels(self, srcline):
[...]
    if parsed_uri.netloc == 'ppa.launchpad.net':
      worker = AddPPASigningKeyThread(parsed_uri.path)
      worker.start()

2. When failing in method add_ppa_signing_key of AddPPASigningKeyThread class, it prints an error and return False :
[...]
        except URLError, e:
            print "Error reading %s: %s" % (lp_url, e)
            return False

3. But the return code generated by the thread is nowhere managed. In fact, two lines are inconditionnaly added in source file :
  def add_source_from_line(self, line):
[...]
    self.check_and_add_key_for_whitelisted_channels(deb_line)
    self.sourceslist.list.append(new_deb_entry)
    self.sourceslist.list.append(new_debsrc_entry)

Hope it helps...