Re: dash pulled on stable when APT::Default-Release is used

[Sven Mueller <sven@incase.de>]

Philipp Kern schrieb:
> On 2009-07-29, Michael S. Gilbert <michael.s.gilbert@gmail.com> wrote:
>> it is a bug in the sense that stable's behavior is being unduly
>> influenced by unstable's "essential packages" list.  i would suggest
>> submitting a report to the bts so the problem can be tracked and
>> eliminated in future releases.
> 
> That's somewhat by definition, sorry.  If you have unstable packages
> activated they may be relying on essential packages from unstable to
> work.  So they have to be installed.  No bug there.

I know I'm replying a bit late here, but I think it is a (perhaps only
wishlist) bug. In my opinion, behaviour should be:
At any time, use the essentials list relevant to the packages you install.
In other words, apt should keep track of the newest release it touched
while installing.
For example, on one of my systems, where I often backport stuff for
internal use, I have both testing and stable listed in my sources.list,
but I never installed any package from any of these "releases". So I see
no reason why apt should pull in new "essential" packages from the
testing or unstable list.
On the other hand, once I would install a package from squeeze, I would
expect apt to also install all new essential packages listed for squeeze.

Regards,
Sven