germinate fails to report error in improperly-specified archs

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Florent 'Skia' Jacquet and Athos Ribeiro uploaded a new version of ubuntustudio-meta, version 25.04.10 [1]. This version, after 'update' was run, reported 'digikam' as removed from photography-recommends. I noticed this when, on my plucky installation, it had been made a candidate for autoremoval.

I then, after investigating, imported the diff from 25.04.10 and ran 'update' with an older debootstrap version, this one in noble. The difference there was that this one re-added 'digikam' to photography-recommends, so I re-uploaded it.[2]

However, running 'update' on a plucky machine caused it to disappear again. This confirmed the bug for me:

$ ./update
[snip]
Removed digikam from photography-recommends

As this makes no sense since there is no difference other than the debootstrap version, I have concluded that the issue lies in debootstrap, 1.0.134ubuntu1 (noble) versus 1.0.140 (plucky).

As this involves two different germinate versions, 2.44 (noble) versus 2.46 (plucky), I'm adding that too, though I doubt that is the issue.

In particular, digikam has negative architecture constraints:
* (digikam) [!ppc64el] [!riscv64] [!s390x]

https://git.launchpad.net/~ubuntustudio-dev/ubuntu-seeds/+git/ubuntustudio/tree/photography

EDIT: I confirmed the issue is _NOT_ debootstrap but germinate

[1] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntustudio-meta/25.04.10
[2] https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntustudio-meta/25.04.11

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

This bug is a bit unclear to me:

> there is no difference other than the debootstrap version

> As this involves two different germinate versions, 2.44 (noble) versus 2.46 (plucky), I'm adding that too, though I doubt that is the issue.

An easy way to rule this out is to install 2.46 in noble or 2.44 in plucky and check if germinate is causing this.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Actually, it appears to be germinate and not debootstrap!

$ apt-cache policy germinate
germinate:
  Installed: 2.44
  Candidate: 2.46
  Version table:
     2.46 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu plucky/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu plucky/main i386 Packages
 *** 2.44 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ ./update
[snip]
No changes found

-----
$ apt-cache policy germinate
germinate:
  Installed: 2.46
  Candidate: 2.46
  Version table:
 *** 2.46 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu plucky/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu plucky/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ ./update
[snip]
Removed digikam from photography-recommends

This indicates the problem is germinate.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Just tested in oracular:

$ apt-cache policy germinate
germinate:
  Installed: 2.45
  Candidate: 2.45
  Version table:
 *** 2.45 500
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oracular/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

$ ./update
[snip]
No changes found

This means 2.45 was the last known good version.

[Simon Quigley (tsimonq2)]

31be5e37a2ac56b1d16747742951254cbb7e3313 is the first bad commit
commit 31be5e37a2ac56b1d16747742951254cbb7e3313
Author: Benjamin Drung <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Feb 14 19:16:11 2025 +0100

    Support alternatives in recommends

    Support alternatives in recommends (e.g. `(initramfs-tools | dracut)`).

    LP: #2097623

 germinate/germinator.py | 25 +++++++++++++++----------
 germinate/scripts/germinate_update_metapackage.py | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++------
 germinate/tests/test_germinator.py | 46 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 3 files changed, 87 insertions(+), 16 deletions(-)

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Lowered the bug's priority as I changed the seed.

- * (digikam) [!ppc64el] [!riscv64] [!s390x]
+ * (digikam) [!ppc64el !riscv64 !s390x]

This made the result good. However, the change in behavior is still a bit of a bug.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

The former syntax isn't really valid and should probably cause an error, we should figure out how though.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Thanks, Julian.

Based on that I'm going to go ahead and add `ubuntustudio-meta` to the bug with "Fix Released" just to keep track from my side as that means the bug *was* valid with ubuntustudio-meta.

However, I'm going to leave the germinate component as it appears to be a bug in the test case per our (brief) discussion on Matrix.