Re: APT Testers..

[Brian May <bam@debian.org>]

>>>>> "Jason" == Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ualberta.ca> writes:
                                       
    Jason>    The APT preferences file controls various aspects of the
    Jason> APT system.  It is ment to be user editable and
    Jason> manipulatable from software. The file consists of a number
    Jason> of records formed like the dpkg status file, space
    Jason> seperated sections of text with at the start of each line
    Jason> tags seperated by a colon. It is stored in
    Jason> /etc/apt/preferences.

I think this is a very important and long awaited feature. I have
several comments:
   
    Jason> v=2.1*,o=Debian,c=main
    Jason> l=stable
    Jason> a=Debian

The last two examples seem to contradict:
   
    Jason>    a= Archive This is the common name we give our archives,
    Jason> such as stable or unstable.

[...]
          
    Jason>    l= Label This carries the encompassing name of the
    Jason> distribution. For Debian proper this field reads
    Jason> Debian. For derived distributions it should contain their
    Jason> proper name.
         
Perhaps they should be swapped?
   
    Jason>    Users of 3rd party add ons such as Helix GNOME can use
    Jason> this mechanism to force the usage of Helix packages, or
    Jason> force the usage of Debian packages by setting the priority
    Jason> of that source sufficiently high. It is even possible to
    Jason> mass downgrade from one set of packages to another by using
    Jason> a priority larger than 1000.
   
If I wanted to track Gnome packages from woody, but all others from
potato (eg. lets say helix was integrated into woody), would this be
possible, or would I have to list each package individually?
-- 
Brian May <bam@debian.org>