Bug#457264: Please document Apt::Never-Mark-Auto
Package: apt
Version: 0.7.9
Severity: wishlist
Tags: patch
Hi,
While going through the code to write up my earlier Debug:: patch, I
noticed an option named 'Apt::Never-Mark-Auto' that I'd never heard of
before. I did a quick check and sure enough, it was undocumented. I've
attached an initial attempt at a patch to fix it (also in my bzr tree).
I don't entirely understand how it's supposed to behave, so the patch
may be wrong. In particular, it looks like the code disables the
"ForceImportantDeps" option of MarkInstall if this option is set on a
package. It's not obvious to me what effect this has; it looks like it
means that apt-get won't try to correct non-critical dependencies --
i.e., Recommends -- of packages that are currently installed. I'm not
sure what it actually does or what the motivation is, though; it would
probably be good to improve the documentation of this point. I could
also be completely mad and seeing special cases where none exist, of
course. ;-)
Daniel
-- Package-specific info:
-- (/etc/apt/preferences present, but not submitted) --
-- (/etc/apt/sources.list present, but not submitted) --
-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
APT prefers unstable
APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.22-3-686 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Versions of packages apt depends on:
ii debian-archive-keyring 2007.07.31 GnuPG archive keys of the Debian a
ii libc6 2.7-5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii libgcc1 1:4.3-20071130-1 GCC support library
ii libstdc++6 4.3-20071130-1 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
apt recommends no packages.
-- no debconf information
=== modified file 'doc/apt.conf.5.xml'
--- doc/apt.conf.5.xml 2007-12-21 05:09:18 +0000
+++ doc/apt.conf.5.xml 2007-12-21 05:25:18 +0000
@@ -156,6 +156,24 @@
<listitem><para>The CDROM subsection controls the &apt-cdrom; tool, please see its
documentation for more information about the options here.</para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
+
+ <varlistentry>
+ <term><literal>Never-Mark-Auto</literal></term>
+ <listitem>
+ <para>
+ A group containing one or more string values, each of which
+ is an archive section in which packages should never be
+ considered to be automatically installed. In addition,
+ dependencies of these packages will never be marked for
+ install by <literal>MarkInstall()</literal>, even if the
+ function parameter <literal>ForceImportantDeps</literal> is
+ set to true. <!-- TODO: is my understanding of this code
+ (in depcache.cc) right? Probably the rationale for
+ disabling ForceImportantDeps should be explained but I
+ don't know what it is. -->
+ </para>
+ </listitem>
+ </varlistentry>
</variablelist>
</refsect1>
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