Contents files are not listed with checksums

I can confirm that this bug is still present in 11.10.

After running debmirror with --getcontents I get:

sudo apt-file update
cp: cannot stat `//home/files/packages/ubuntu/dists/oneiric/Contents-amd64.gz': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `//home/files/packages/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-updates/Contents-amd64.gz': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `//home/files/packages/ubuntu/dists/oneiric-security/Contents-amd64.gz': No such file or directory

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

I can confirm this ... we have the same issue here!

This actually appears to be a problem with the Ubuntu archive, not debmirror. The Release files in the Ubuntu archive are missing hashes for the Contents-* files. E.g., see:

http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/precise/Release

Compare this to a Debian archive's Release file, which *does* list the Contents-* files:

http://archive.debian.org/debian/dists/lenny/Release

I think there's a minor bug here where debmirror should be complaining that it can't find Contents files rather than silently dropping them, but the underlying problem seems to be with the Ubuntu archive.

I've emailed <email address hidden> as that's listed as the way to report problems with the mirrors. I'll post here if I get a response from them.

Launchpad generates the contents files, making this bug in launchpad

can anybody give us an update on this bug?

> can anybody give us an update on this bug?
+1!

I'm building Debian source packages from Perl modules with dh-make-perl, which relies on apt-file for dependencies checking. However,

apt-file update says:

Ignoring source without Contents File:
  http://ppa.launchpad.net/suntong001/ppa/ubuntu/dists/saucy/Contents-amd64.gz

I.e., dh-make-perl dependencies checking for my Perl modules will *always fail*, even I have the dependencies modules in my PPA.

Tong Sun, that's bug #335161.

So... Is anyone solving this issue?

Last comment is five months old.

It's not currently on our roadmap to fix, but Launchpad's open source and we'd be happy to mentor someone to fix it themselves. See https://dev.launchpad.net/ to get started with development.

This is not quite entirely as trivial as it first looks. Firstly, we need to make sure to put Contents in place before publishing the rest of the archive, rather than the other way round as is done today. Secondly, we need to ensure that if any of a pocket's Contents files have changed then the pocket is marked dirty and hence has its Release file rewritten, which is not straightforwardly the case today. There may be a couple of other subtleties I've missed.

Fixed in stable r17407 <http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~launchpad-pqm/launchpad/stable/revision/17407>.

Note that this fix will take effect from vivid onwards (well, and for non-release suites such as -updates), unless we have some pressing reason to regenerate the Release files for stable releases. To date, we've only done that when we've had to remove packages due to pressing legal reasons.