Re: [users] Re: how to prevent apt-get upgrading a package?

[Richard Cobbe <cobbe@directlink.net>]

Lo, on Sunday, July 1, Martin F. Krafft did write:

> also sprach Joost Kooij (on Sun, 01 Jul 2001 03:23:37PM +0200):
> > It's called dselect.  But it is a secret.  If you tell anyone about it,
> > the cabal will have to send a mob onto you.  ;-)
> 
> but as far as i know, you only want to place a "hold" onto that
> package, then use apt-get for the dist-upgrade. i think; noone has
> explained to me the difference between apt-get upgrade and apt-get
> dist-upgrade yet :(

Someone should please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the following
is the difference:

apt-get upgrade will only touch packages which you have already installed.
apg-get dist-upgrade will update all packages that you've installed, plus
install any new packages required by the later versions.

Consider an example: version 1.5 of the foo package requires packages bar
and baz.  Version 2.0 of foo is released and packaged; this version depends
on bar, baz, and quux.  If you don't already have quux installed, then
apt-get upgrade will not upgrade foo, because it never installs new
packages.  apt-get dist-upgrade, however, will detect that quux is now
required, install that, then upgrade foo.  If you already had quux
installed for some other reason, then upgrade & dist-upgrade will have the
same effect, at least as far as foo is concerned.

Given this, it's unclear to me why one would want to use apt-get upgrade.

Richard