apt-move cannot copy/move packages whose filenames contain spaces

[drink]

Binary package hint: apt-move

I'm working on building a pooled package repository with apt-move for my own use. This has turned out to be surprisingly undocumented. I'm making a lot of progress and have apt-move working for me and not against me, have figured out how to make Contents files for copies of Ubuntu install disc pooled repos, et cetera. But now I have discovered that apt-move chokes when you have packages with spaces in the names. This appears to be a common problem with xargs (which it appears is how the problem ends up here.) If the input is changed such that newlines become NULs and we use the -0 option to xargs (null terminated) then it seems that the problem should go away. But I'm no expert :)

Here's some sample output:

~$ sudo apt-move update

[sudo] password for drink:

Updating from local Packages files...

Moving files...

md5sum: /var/cache/apt/archives/compiz_1:0.6.2: No such file or directory

md5sum: git20071119-0ubuntu1~gutsy1_all.deb: No such file or directory

md5sum: /var/cache/apt/archives/compiz-core_1:0.6.2: No such file or directory

md5sum: git20071119-0ubuntu1~gutsy1_i386.deb: No such file or directory

md5sum: /var/cache/apt/archives/compiz-gnome_1:0.6.2: No such file or directory

md5sum: git20071119-0ubuntu1~gutsy1_i386.deb: No such file or directory

md5sum: /var/cache/apt/archives/compiz-plugins_1:0.6.2: No such file or directory

md5sum: git20071119-0ubuntu1~gutsy1_i386.deb: No such file or directory

md5sum: /var/cache/apt/archives/ffmpeg_3:0.cvs20070307-5ubuntu4: No such file or directory

md5sum: medibuntu3_i386.deb: No such file or directory

It goes on for a while before printing the names of packages which are being successfully added to the repo. (I have delete disabled at this stage.)

I tried changing the md5sum run by xargs to options -0r, and added "tr '\n' '\0' |" before xargs. This got me to a new error:

~$ sudo ./apt-move update

Updating from local Packages files...

Moving files...

dpkg-deb: failed to read archive `/var/cache/apt/archives/compiz_1:0.6.2': No such file or directory

dpkg-deb returned nothing on /var/cache/apt/archives/compiz_1:0.6.2

dpkg-deb: failed to read archive `/var/cache/apt/archives/compiz-core_1:0.6.2': No such file or directory

dpkg-deb returned nothing on /var/cache/apt/archives/compiz-core_1:0.6.2

dpkg-deb: failed to read archive `/var/cache/apt/archives/compiz-gnome_1:0.6.2': No such file or directory

dpkg-deb returned nothing on /var/cache/apt/archives/compiz-gnome_1:0.6.2

I went ahead and ran the script -x and it proceeded to run off into the lands of awk and perl where I dare not and choose not to go, respectively. But hopefully this information is helpful.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Filenames for source packages and binary packages should not contain spaces.