Duplicate package entries shown when listing by package origin

[N0rbert]

What should happen:

Synaptic should as previously show a single item for each package when viewing package list from a particular 'origin'.

What does happen:

For many packages up to 4 identical entries are shown for each package. See attached screencap.

Duplicate list items are quite literally identical and are true duplicates as they relate to the identical package in all respects, including full version. In fact, so much so, that selecting one of a duplicate for an operation such as install/upgrade/remove etc selects and then operates on all the duplicate entries as well.

Same problem has been noted on a real machine and in VM running variants of Xenial - Xubuntu/Kubuntu etc, with or with any ppas present on system.

Quoted from https://pad.lv/1533554 , it is a bug with about 5 years history.

[BryanQuigley]

Also see: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=864654

I can reproduce this.. but it seems to occur with random packages and not with others. Has anyone noticed a pattern?

[trebmuh]

Same for me.
I can reproduce with some packages but not for some other.
Didn't find a pattern.
Synaptic 0.84.6 on Debian Buster.

[armakunizen]

With Synaptic 0.84.6 I have the same issue, after upgrading my Bionic to Focal.

Interesting here is, that is doesn't affect every package. It's best seen if you switch to the "origin" view. I don't know why, but some PPAs are listed twice (called NAME/focal and NAME/now). Some packages will be shown up to four times. Regeneration of xapian index didn't help, and in Aptitude this doesn't happen.

Due to the Kubuntu upgrade and all PPA where disabled, I try to re-enable them one by one and check in Synaptic, maybe I can find a pattern.

[N0rbert]

Still happens on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS. Do you plan to fix this bug?

[hamishmb]

I get this with Linux Mint 20.02 (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS base). Seems to be related to the number of times I have removed and reinstalled a package.

Can anyone else confirm this behaviour?

[AngryPhantom]

@hamishmb

I get this with Linux Mint 20.02 (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS base). Seems to be related to the number of times I have removed and reinstalled a package.

Can anyone else confirm this behaviour?

Can confirm the bug, but regardless of the packages installation/reinstallation. I have duplicates of packages I've never installed.

[hamishmb]

Good to know. I'd suspected that might be the case as well, but I hadn't ever checked.

Would it be useful for me to see if I can make this occur with eg the default package set from some version of Debian, to make it easier to reproduce and know if it is fixed?

[Skif-off]

@hamishmb , try any *Ubuntu disk in Live mode: add PPA, for example, LibreOffice Fresh, open Synaptic, go to "Origin" and find this PPA in the list.

Maybe the problem is here (for Jammy 22.04): InRelease, Release, by-hash and main, i.e. several ways to show the contents of the repository at the same time.

[hamishmb]

I shall give that a go and see if that is an easy reproducer.

The way the repos are organized is unrelated I think - this is about the tools that process that information.