Recent locale related regression causes crashes in debconf.py and python-apt

[clefebvre]

Hi @julian-klode, thanks for keeping an eye on github.

Ubuntu Xenial recently updated its version of apt and included commits all the way to 1.3.1.

Here is their changelog: http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/a/apt/apt_1.2.15/changelog

Starting with their version 1.2.15, we're observing crashes in Python applications (such as mintinstall which uses python-apt or ubiquity which uses debconf.py) when the locale uses a comma for thousand separators as opposed to a dot.

Running these programs with LC_NUMERIC=C prevents the issue from happening.

In python-apt's base.py script, the following call fails if percent includes a comma:

float(percent)

In debconf's debconf.py, the following call fails also:

status = int(status)

There are probably other scripts which fail like that. I just found these two.

When playing with python-apt I noticed that the "percent" value returned by dpkg was now localized.

It used to start at 0.0000 no matter what locale was used.

It now starts at 0.0000 in English, which is fine... but at 0,0000 in French, Swedish, Russian and many other languages which use commas instead of dots.

Python is unable to cast that into a float and throws an exception.

Looking at the APT commits, I see this:

0fb16c3

Although it looks fine.. could it be responsible for these regressions?

[julian-klode]

Nah, I don't really know what exactly started that, but it should be fixed in 1.2.16 since 2 weeks.

[julian-klode]

To be clear: I uploaded that to xenial 2 weeks ago, it just has not been accepted into -proposed yet. In the meantime, 1.2.17 sneaked in to fix some other bugs as well.

You can of course use the PPA in the meantime:

[julian-klode]

Argh, the PPA is at: https://launchpad.net/~deity/+archive/ubuntu/apt-1.2 - It currently has 1.2.16 (labelled as RC1), but I just uploaded the 1.2.17 hotfix there as well.

[clefebvre]

Thanks @julian-klode, do you have a link to the commit which fixes it?

[julian-klode]

It should be commit 1e352b9, but that really depends on all the others ones before it.

[clefebvre]

Thanks @julian-klode

[clefebvre]

Hi @julian-klode,

Is something preventing 1.2.17 from getting into Xenial?

In http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/a/apt/apt_1.2.15ubuntu0.2/changelog you applied the 1.2.17 -> 1.2.18 security fix but it's still missing the commits provided by 1.2.16 and 1.2.17?

[julian-klode]

Well, release team needs to process it at some point. This takes a few weeks or months...

[clefebvre]

Thanks @julian-klode.