OK folks, a new version (0.5.4.9) of apt has been posted at
http://people.debian.org/~doogie/apt/
so that gives us a new base to work from. I volunteer
to collect any patches or change requests against the 0.5.4.9
man page. Susan: Can you please send me a new patch?
Straight away I see a few typos. There are a couple I
don't know how to fix. Can you help me?:
1. In the second paragraph under DETERMINATION OF PACKAGE
VERSION AND RELEASE PROPERTIES it says "The Packages file is
normally found in the directory It consists of a series ...".
The directory name does not appear.
2. Under EXAMPLES the headings look like this:
TRACKING STABLE""
TRACKING TESTING""
More serious is the issue of priority assignment to "instance"
versus "version". It appears that I was fairly successful in
expressing my belief about how APT works, but less successful
in expressing an accurate belief. Based on what I read in
#179868, I take it that APT assigns priorities to versions,
not to instances; it does not keep track of instances until
it needs to find an instance of a selected version to download
for installation. Is this right?
Additionally:
1. Use "distribution" more consistently rather than "release"
2. Clarify some of the wording
3. Say "upgrade" instead of "dist-upgrade"
I have received a couple of wishes for additions:
1. An example of using preferences to track testing and
to allow the installation of the odd "unstable" package
which won't then track unstable on apt-get upgrade.
2. Explanation that only the order of prioirities is significant,
not the absolute magnitude.
--
Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>