Bug#114240: apt: --target-release does not work with "upgrade" and "dist-upgrade"
Package: apt
Version: 0.5.4
Severity: normal
Though not explicitly documented, the following command do not work
in a logical way (explained hereafter):
# apt-get --target-release testing upgrade
IMHO, the expected outcome of this command is that a system would be
upgraded to 'testing'. I.e. all packages that are to be upgraded would
be upgraded to the version available at the 'testing' distribution,
and packages that are already up-to-date with the version at 'testing'
would not be upgraded at all.
Currently, if, say, 'stable', 'testing' and 'unstable' are present in
the sources.list, the given command would upgrade packages that are
not up-to-date with 'testing' (if any) properly, but for packages that
are already up-to-date with 'testing', the system would upgrade them
to 'unstable' (if a newer version exists).
E.g. (from my actual system): my system is completely up-to-date with
'woody' (with some packages from 'unstable'). I, then, installed
stable's version of 'pacman', and run this command (with a "-s", of
course :^>). The system wants to upgrade all packages to 'unstable',
with the exception of pacman, which it wants to upgrade to 'testing'.
As for "dist-upgrade", a similar reasoning can be applied.
In other words, these commands should behave as if the 'unstable' and
'stable' entries of the sources.list do not even _exist_.
The only "sticking point" is when -- if ever -- to downgrade a package
if it is newer than the target-release. I think this would only be
appropriate if the user explicitly requests this.
Thanks,
Zorzella
-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Kernel Version: Linux purple 2.2.18 #1 Sun Jan 14 08:53:46 PST 2001 i586 unknown
Versions of the packages apt depends on:
ii libc6 2.2.4-1 GNU C Library: Shared libraries and Timezone
ii libstdc++2.10- 2.95.4-0.01090 The GNU stdc++ library
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