Re: Holding packages w/o dselect

[Bob Hilliard <bob@bobhilliard.net>]

James Di Toro <karrde@gateway.greenbush.com> writes:

> I've looked through the help screens and man pages of both dpkg and
> apt-get and I can't find anything that will let me place a package version
> on hold using these tools.  I'd like to avoid using dselect if possible
> since a) the structure of the categorys is at times unintutive, and b) the
> last time I wen't int there is screwed up some dependancys and I got stuck
> in an infinate dependancy conflict resolution.  Don't want to go through
> that again.

     Try the following script from Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>:

---cut here---
#! /bin/bash

# dpkg-hold  --  command line tool to flag package(s) as held.
#
# by Craig Sanders, 1998-10-26.  This script is hereby placed into the 
# public domain.
#
# BUGS: this script has absolutely no error checking.  this is not good.

if [ -z "$*" ] ; then
    echo "Usage:"
    echo "      dpkg-hold <package...>"
    exit 1
fi

for i in $@ ; do
    echo "$i    hold"
done | dpkg --set-selections
---cut here---

     Despite the caveat about error checking, I have had good results
with it.  It is trivial to modify it to make dpkg-unhold.

Bob
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