deselct - managing multiple releases

[Colin Bell <cpbell@uwaterloo.ca>]

Hi all,

I've been trying to get this to work (off and on) for the last little
while.  I'm starting to think it's not possible.

Here is my end goal:

(1) I want to maintain a variety of sources in my /etc/apt/sources.list
file that are pulling from different releases (stable/testing/unstable).

(2) I want to use dselect to do my regular upgrades and installation
from the "stable" branch.  I want packages to appear in dselect that are
not in stable but exist in either "testing" or "unstable".  I then want
to be able to upgrade (and pull new packages based on dependancies).

Okay.  I know that this system will only last a short period of time
before I want a package from "testing" or "unstable" that has
dependancies which conflict with "stable" packages.  When this happens,
I want all required "stable" packages to be updated to their "sarge" or
"sid" counterparts.

I've tried two basic things to try and make this work.

(a) in /etc/apt/apt.conf

APT::Default-Release "stable";

and

(b) in /etc/apt/preferences

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 400

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 50

Now... I run dselect -> Update and then Install... dselect then proceeds
to convinces apt that it needs to pull and install from the testing
release.  I don't understand.  This is what I didn't want.  I didn't
select anything new so I was hoping that any thing already installed
from stable would stay the way it was.

Why does dselect feel the need to upgrade from the testing release?  Is
there anyway to stop this from happening?

Thanks,
Colin Bell
cpbell@uwaterloo.ca