Bug#695633: apt: support explicitly named source packages with "src:foo"

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Tue, 2012-12-11 at 08:13:21 +0800, Daniel Hartwig wrote:
> Package: apt
> Severity: wishlist

> Some Debian tools (such as bugs.d.o) support explicitly named source
> packages using a “src:” prefix.  apt-get currently has “--only-source”,
> documented to look for source package names.  It may be useful to also
> support the de facto common prefix.

The problem with this, is that it meddles with the “package:arch”
namespace and migt imply that a hypothetical package named src is
not accessible in the namespace depending on the context, because
the ‘:’ delimiter is already used for the architecture. To me it
seems it would make the current interface more confusing. Compare
these (fabricated) cases:

  $ apt-get source libc6:amd64
  # Is this source package eglibc, or binary package src with eglibc arch.
  $ apt-get source src:eglibc
  # Is this source package src, or binary package src with src arch.
  $ apt-get source src:src

Thanks,
Guillem