[Bug 1559629] [NEW] autopkgtest should include a sorted list of all installed packages in its log output

[Steve Langasek]

Public bug reported:

Sometimes, a package testsuite will regress for reasons unrelated to any
direct dependency of the package, and as a result there can be a rather
large search space to find the package responsible.  Although
autopkgtest logs will include the output of all of the various apt runs,
this output is very difficult to diff in order to find out what packages
have changed, making it even harder to find the responsible package.
There may also be regressions caused by packages already installed on
the system, that therefore don't show up in any apt output.

Including a sorted list of all packages installed on the system (with
versions) would make this a lot easier to sift through.

(As a further example, it appears that GTK has somehow regressed for all
tests in xenial-proposed, trying to connect to a mir backend instead of
the xvfb provided by the autopkgtest runner - but this change is not
attributable to any of the packages that are being installed, so it must
be something different in the base environment?)

** Affects: autopkgtest (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1559629

Title:
  autopkgtest should include a sorted list of all installed packages in
  its log output

Status in autopkgtest package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Sometimes, a package testsuite will regress for reasons unrelated to
  any direct dependency of the package, and as a result there can be a
  rather large search space to find the package responsible.  Although
  autopkgtest logs will include the output of all of the various apt
  runs, this output is very difficult to diff in order to find out what
  packages have changed, making it even harder to find the responsible
  package.  There may also be regressions caused by packages already
  installed on the system, that therefore don't show up in any apt
  output.

  Including a sorted list of all packages installed on the system (with
  versions) would make this a lot easier to sift through.

  (As a further example, it appears that GTK has somehow regressed for
  all tests in xenial-proposed, trying to connect to a mir backend
  instead of the xvfb provided by the autopkgtest runner - but this
  change is not attributable to any of the packages that are being
  installed, so it must be something different in the base environment?)

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