Re: apt preferences semantics (was Re: Shall I upgrade to Woody?)

[dman <dsh8290@rit.edu>]

On Thu, Oct 18, 2001 at 04:09:43PM -0700, Vineet Kumar wrote:
| * dman (dsh8290@rit.edu) [011018 09:39]:
| > However, it doesn't seem that apt does what _I_ want it to do right
| > now.  I want to follow woody, except for a couple things that are
| > only available in sid.  So the semantics I want are : install package
| > from sid plus deps.  Everything else is woody.  When that package
| > eventually gets to woody, have the package follow woody and not sid.
| > It seems from the man page that once I install something from sid I'm
| > stuck with sid for that package, unless maybe I explicitly force the
| > package(s) to woody.  The modify-sources-install-return-sources has
| > the semantics I want, except that I have to remember to return my
| > sources.list (which I forgot once on my desktop).
| > 
| > I just installed galeon and mozilla-psm (neat!) using the preferences
| > stuff.  When I tried
| > 
| >     apt-get -s install galeon
| > 
| > I was told that lots of stuff was too old.  When I did
| > 
| >     apt-get -s -t unstable install galeon
| > 
| > I was told that lots of stuff not needed by galeon would be installed
| > too.  I eventually did a
| > 
| >     apt-get install galeon <package1>/unstable ... <packagen>/unstable
| > 
| > to get all of galeon's dependencies.  While it worked, I don't think
| > that is the Right Way to do it.  Also, it seems that those packages
| > will be "stuck" at coming from sid even when they enter woody.
| > 
| > Enlightenment is welcomed :-)
| 
| USe a default pin between 0 and 100 for unstable. This will give your
| installed version higher priority(100) than any new unstable versions,
| but lower priority than any new woody versions (whose default pin I
| assume you have set in the high hundreds). As long as your woody
| priority is less than 1000, packages selected fom unstable won't be
| downgraded/removed in the meantime.
| 
| This will solve the problem of packages getting "stuck" in sid, but I

This works!  Cool.  I saw something about the ranges, but it didn't
make sense when I read it.

| can't give a good answer on how to fix the first problem of having to
| manually specify package1/unstable package2/unstable package3/unstable.

Actually, in looking back I don't think it was a problem.  From going
through the semi-manual dependency resolution it seems that galeon
does need all the stuff it lists.  (well, then the -dev stuff gets
upgrade lockstep with the binary as it should be)


Now the only problem is it doesn't seem that comments are allowed in
the preferences file so that I'll remember why I did what I did.  :-(
(if they aren't implemented yet, I like '#' as the begin token and
'\n' as the end token)

-D