Following KDE 4.5.1 upgrade instructions, apt doing odd things with pin priority

[Brendon Higgins <blhiggins@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I'm trying to follow the instructions on http://qt-kde.debian.net/ to upgrade 
my KDE installation, but no matter what I do apt and aptitude seem to ignore 
any attempt to change the pin priority of the experimental-snapshots release, 
including setting it as the default release so that I may do a full-upgrade.

For example, here's what I get from running "apt-cache -o APT::Default-
Release="experimental-snapshots" policy kdebase-apps":
kdebase-apps:
  Installed: 4:4.4.5-1
  Candidate: 4:4.4.5-1
  Version table:
     4:4.5.1-0r2 0
        500 http://qt-kde.debian.net/debian/ experimental-snapshots/main amd64 
Packages
 *** 4:4.4.5-1 0
        900 http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ testing/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Compare this to when I run "apt-cache -o APT::Default-Release="unstable" 
policy kdebase-apps":
kdebase-apps:
  Installed: 4:4.4.5-1
  Candidate: 4:4.4.5-1
  Version table:
     4:4.5.1-0r2 0
        500 http://qt-kde.debian.net/debian/ experimental-snapshots/main amd64 
Packages
 *** 4:4.4.5-1 0
        900 http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ testing/main amd64 Packages
        990 http://ftp.au.debian.org/debian/ unstable/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

This is what I would expect: unstable is set to 990 priority. But in the 
former case, the pin priority is unchanged from what appears to be the 
default. This also seems to be ignoring the setting of 101 that I've added to 
/etc/apt/preferences (as per the instructions). I've tried it with that as the 
only entry in preferences, but the behaviour is the same.

Apt seems to be ignoring the experimental-snapshots release. Perhaps because 
its name is hyphenated?

My apt version is 0.8.5. I wonder if this is happening to anyone else, or is 
it just me?

(Please CC as I'm not subscribed.)

Peace,
Brendon