Re: /etc/apt/preferences problem - might cause problems when Sarge goes stable!

[Ben Bettin <bwbettin@gmail.com>]

> I wouldn't use priority values higher than 1000 unless I plan to do a
> dist downgrade.

I had thought the same as you until I thought about the reasoning
behind setting values so high, the way I used it (I think) is more of
a special case.  On the documentation project's site they had some
sample preferences files (one for stable, testing, and unstable) which
is where I got the idea.

According to 'man apt_preferences':

----------
P > 1000
causes a version to be installed  even  if  this  constitutes  a
downgrade of the package
----------

Since I'm using Sarge I set a high priority to testing so that its
packages are the default ones installed.  By setting specific packages
to have priority greater than 1000, you're making them exceptions to
the default rule.

So if you were using testing, but you wanted to use the stable
versions of say Apache, you'd give apache from stable a priority >
1000.  That way the stable apache would overrule the one from testing
(in this case it constitutes a downgrade).  Since Unstable will never
have packages with a lower version than Testing, the downgrade effect
doesn't come into play in my case.

I'm still very curious if the conflicting labels from
/etc/apt/preferences and /etc/apt/sources.list will have bad effects
on people with mixed installs when Sarge goes Stable?

Ben



On Fri, 17 Dec 2004 17:26:39 +0100, kurtz <kurtz611@yahoo.es> wrote:
> El viernes 17 de diciembre de 2004 a las 15:21:47, Ben Bettin escribe:
> > Package: firestarter
> > Pin: release a=unstable
> > Pin-Priority: 1100
> 
> I wouldn't use priority values higher than 1000 unless I plan to do a
> dist downgrade.
> 
> Hope this makes sense.
> 
> 
>