Bug#231914: Command line option (--option DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs) does not work

[Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@debian.org>]

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, W. Borgert wrote:

> I'm not 100% positive about the syntax, but the command line
> 
> # apt-get --option 'DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs="touch /tmp/foo;";' \
>   --yes install hello
> 
> should create a file under /tmp/, but doesn't.  For script
> mirroring parts of Debian, I like to use apt-get install,
> without actually installing the packages:
> 
 
> But this works only, if I set the option in /etc/apt/apt.conf,
> not at the command line.  I tried DPkg::Pre-Invoke without
> success.  I'm working on sarge.

You have the syntax wrong, I forget where this is documented, but for the
various list type items you need to use this format:

 # apt-get --option 'DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs::=false' \
   --yes install hello

Note the extra colon before the =. You can use 'apt-config dump -o blah'
to see what it does ie:

[..]
DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs "";
DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs:: "/usr/sbin/dpkg-preconfigure --apt || true";
DPkg::Pre-Install-Pkgs:: "false";

Jason