Quantal server installs do not include software-properties-common by default

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

I believe the real problem is not exactly that software-properties-common is not installed, but that it doesn't depend on python3-software-properties. This way, even if the add-apt-repository binary is installed, softwareproperties.SoftwareProperties python module might not be available since it's provided by python3-software-properties package.

Parameswaran and Javier,

Please could you explain exactly what your expectations are?

add-apt-repository has never been included in a default server, although I agree it should be and that we should change this.

Previous to Quantal, it was provided by python-software-properties, so this was the package to install to get it, which I suppose is now embedded in the brain of many Ubuntu Server users.

In Quantal, the software-properties source package has been rearranged. To get add-apt-repository, you now need to install software-properties-common.

Javier, what exactly are you trying to do, and what is your expectation about what you are doing to solve this problem that doesn't work?

Is this bug just that the package that supplies add-apt-repository should be added to the server seed, or some other dependency problem?

See bug 1021418 for some more information about the software-properties rearrangement.

(and note that cloud-init does pull in the package that provides add-apt-repository, so this isn't experienced on cloud instances)

<cyphermox> python3-software-properties doesn't currently depend on it, and afaik doesn't need it for anything
<cyphermox> OTOH, software-properties-common needs some of the python libraries in python3-sotware-properties for add-apt-repository to work properly

I'll open a separate bug to add software-properties-common to the server seed.

<cyphermox> well, nm, it's already there

Package: software-properties-common
Depends: python3 (>= 3.2.3-3~), python3.2, python3-gi, gir1.2-glib-2.0, python3-dbus, python3-software-properties

Back to Parameswaran and Javier I guess. Could you please explain exactly what you're trying to do and what the problem is?

Was this bug fixed by this change? Speaking to Javier, it sounds like it. Parameswaran, please can you confirm if fixed?

software-properties (0.88) quantal; urgency=low

  * debian/control: Add missing python3-software-properties dependency to
    software-properties-common, so that add-apt-repository can actually work.

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:46:27 +0200

Robie,
The original bug was reported because software-properties-common was not in the server seed. Tee fix that Martin did is to fix the dependancy issue that Javier was talking about.

I tested with today's server image and the server seed does not still have software-properties-common. I there fore do not think the fix by Marin fixes this bug.

There are two issues here:

1) The depends problem which Martin uploaded a fix for in software-properties (0.88).

2) add-apt-repository is not seeded.

Parameswaran said to me yesterday that his intention was the second of these two. Therefore, I'm marking this bug as a dupe of 439566, which is the bug to add add-apt-repository as default.