APT capabilities?

[Daniel Burrows <Daniel_Burrows@brown.edu>]

  Hi,

  I've been trying to learn how to use the apt-pkg classes and routines, and
I've come across several things in the interface which *appear* to implement
long-standing (for me :) ) wishlist items for apt.  Given that I see some of
these wishes still listed in the BTS, I suspect that I'm getting the apt-pkg
documentation wrong.  The fact that the referenced file appears not to exist
is another clue :)

  What I'm specifically curious about is the 'xstatus' file mentioned in
/usr/doc/apt/files.html/ch2.html#s2.2 .  According to the documentation, it
contains the following flags for each package:
  X-Auto
  X-TargetDist
  X-TargetVersion

  It seems like this information is intended to support the following behaviors
which I would like to see available as options in the various apt frontends:

  -> Tracking whether a package was installed only to satisfy dependencies,
    and automatically removing it if it was and its dependency count goes to 0
  -> Allowing someone to add unstable sources to sources.list without having
    everything automatically upgraded to unstable (that is, make unstable
    packages available but only upgrade to the latest stable version; let
    the user manually install a particular unstable version)

  Could someone please explain to me what's going on with this file and how I
access it (or if I need to)?  Also, if there's a more appropriate list for this
question I suppose I could subscribe to it :)

  Daniel

-- 
  He had a terrible memory.  He remembered everything.