dpkg-maintscript-helper does not show complete debug output

[Maarten Bezemer]

When looking at the rm_conffile() function in the dkpg-maintscript-helper script, these lines can be found to show some debug output:

  debug "Executing $0 rm_conffile in $DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_NAME "\
        "of $DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_PACKAGE"
  debug "CONFFILE=$CONFFILE PACKAGE=$PACKAGE "\
        "LASTVERSION=$LASTVERSION ACTION=$1 PARAM=$2"

When I enable debug output I only get this information:

DEBUG: dpkg-maintscript-helper: Executing /usr/bin/dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile in postinst
DEBUG: dpkg-maintscript-helper: CONFFILE=/etc/mc/Syntax PACKAGE=mc

The 2nd part of each debug output is not shown! (Resulting in my bad understanding of the helper script which was not working) I could easily fix it, by merging the 2 line into one for each debug output. Resulting in:

DEBUG: dpkg-maintscript-helper: Executing /usr/bin/dpkg-maintscript-helper rm_conffile in postinst of mc
DEBUG: dpkg-maintscript-helper: CONFFILE=/etc/mc/Syntax PACKAGE=mc LASTVERSION=4.7.4 ACTION=configure PARAM=3:4.7.0.9-2

$ apt-cache policy dpkg
dpkg:
  Installed: 1.16.1.2ubuntu5
  Candidate: 1.16.1.2ubuntu5
  Version table:
 *** 1.16.1.2ubuntu5 0
         90 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1.16.0.3ubuntu5 0
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main amd64 Packages

[Maarten Bezemer (veger)]

Fixed the problem and tried to find all other occurrences as well.

I do not know whether this fix is important enough to ask for a FeatureFreezeException? Although, it probably won't break anything and is easy to check!

[Raphaël Hertzog (hertzog)]

Thank you for the report. I committed a different fix in the upstream git repository (changing debug() to print all parameters).

I don't think this warrants an immediate upload to Ubuntu, it will be fixed the next time the package is synced with Debian.

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Per Raphaël's comment above, unsubscribing sponsors from this bug as there's nothing to sponsor anymore.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package dpkg - 1.16.3ubuntu1

---------------
dpkg (1.16.3ubuntu1) quantal; urgency=low

  * Merge with 1.16.3 from unstable:
    - Change the multiarch downgrade version checks in prerm/postrm
      from 1.16.2 to 1.16.0~ to reflect when multiarch landed in Ubuntu.
    - Migrate dpkg multiarch conffile (and other multi-arch-related
      conf settings) to the new DB with dpkg --add-architecture, but
      keep a copy of the old conffile if it was modified.
    - Out of paranoia, keep an option handler for foreign-architecture
      that informs people that they need to scrub their config files
      and upgrade, on the off chance that the above migration fails
      for some reason (this mitigates the chances of leaving users with
      a dpkg that fails to run due to a broken config).
  * Changes remaining from previous Ubuntu versions:
    - Add DPKG_UNTRANSLATED_MESSAGES environment check so that higher-level
      tools can get untranslated dpkg terminal log messages while at the
      same time having translated debconf prompts. This is useful for tools
      that hide the dpkg terminal by default and use apport for bug
      reporting with the untranslated error message.
    - Build-depend on gettext:any for cross-building support.
    - Apply patch from Steve McIntyre to special-case armhf/armel ELF
      objects in Shlibs/Objdump.pm, so we don't get incorrect deps.

dpkg (1.16.3) unstable; urgency=low

  [ Guillem Jover ]
  * Do not look for newline beyond the read buffer on dpkg-deb extract.
  * Check update-alternative name and link arguments for all commands.
    Closes: #665050
  * Check all dpkg-divert filename arguments to be absolute and to not
    contain newlines. Closes: #21722
  * Print errors while reading the file list files on a new line instead
    of just after the progress percentage. Closes: #552517
  * Document in dpkg-source(1) that patches for source format “3.0 (quilt)”
    are expected to apply without any fuzz. Closes: #666752
    Based on a patch by Luca Capello <email address hidden>.
  * Remove redundant -Wformat-security from default dpkg-buildflags, which
    is already implied by -Werror=format-security. Closes: #664964
    Suggested by Peter Eisentraut <email address hidden>.
  * Document in dpkg-query(1) that commands producing multiple paragraphs
    will preserve the order of the packages specified on the argument list.
  * Change start-stop-daemon --exec on GNU/Hurd, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD
    and Solaris to check for executables matching device and inode numbers
    instead of filenames.
  * Change start-stop-daemon --name on GNU/Hurd to check the process' argv[1]
    in addition to argv[0], to handle both binaries and interpreted scripts.
    Reported by Mats Erik Andersson <email address hidden>.
  * Handle deb format versions as major.minor integers instead of strings or
    floats, the latter being susceptible to parsing errors depending on the
    current locale (although this was only affecting the old deb format).
  * Ignore the minor format version number for deb-split format, unifying
    the behaviour with the deb format.
  * Add support for an abitable containin...