Re: dselect handling stable AND unstable [was Re: forcing dselect to downgrade]

[Ed Cogburn <ecogburn@greene.xtn.net>]

Rick Macdonald wrote:
> 
> George Bonser wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 4 Mar 1999, Rick Macdonald wrote:
> >
> > > This is something that I've always wondered about. Can you actually tell
> > > dselect about both stable and unstable at the same time? I've always
> > > been afraid to do that.
> >
> > Yes, you can do that. Just make sure you go in the order of most stable to
> > least stable. In other words, define stable first then unstable.
> 
> So what does it look like in dselect?
> 
> Right now, with stable, contrib, non-free and non-US, I see, for
> example:
> 
> --- available packages in section net ---
> --- available packages in section non-free/net ---
> --- available packages in section non-US/net ---
> --- available packages in section contrib/net ---
> 
> Does it merge stable and unstable and just show the newest version of
> each package, or keep them separate so I can choose?


	When using *apt*, it will merge all the info from all the sources
you specify in /etc/apt/sources.list.  It will pick the latest
versions and remove duplicates automatically (then pass the list
to dselect for display), so I don't believe users can control this
process.  Its a good idea though, because I've often wanted to
know whether the package I'm looking at in dselect's display is
from stable, or unstable.


-- 
Ed C.