Pinning vs. conflicting [was: How to avoid stealth installation...]

[Juliusz Chroboczek <jch@pps.univ-paris-diderot.fr>]

> You have not yet explained why apt pinning is not enough.

I'd appreciate an explanation too.  I've inserted in my apt/preferences
file the incantation given by Vitali F. (to whom thanks) at the very
beginning of this thread, and it appears to have the requested effect.

I've looked through the whole thread, and I can see the following reasons:

 - conflicting packages are honoured by dpkg, unlike pinning;
 - a package can conflict with multiple packages, while you need
   multiple pinning entries;
 - there's a number of user-friendly frontends to apt, while pinning
   requires using a text editor (the horror!).

Are there any other reasons to prefer conflicting dummy packages, which,
with all due respect to Thorsten and Wookey, are something of a hack.

Thanks to everyone who helped,

-- Juliusz