Bug#623706: possible mistakes in apt_preferences(5)

[Julian Andres Klode <jak@debian.org>]

On Di, 2011-04-26 at 23:24 +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote:
> In addition, the following seems to be strange:
> 
> The manpage says:
> >       If the target release has been specified then APT uses the following
> >       algorithm to set the priorities of the versions of a package. Assign:
> >
> >       priority 1
> >           to the versions coming from archives which in their Release files
> >           are marked as "NotAutomatic: yes" but not as "ButAutomaticUpgrades:
> >           yes" like the debian experimental archive.
> >
> >       priority 100
> >           to the version that is already installed (if any) and to the
> >           versions coming from archives which in their Release files are
> >           marked as "NotAutomatic: yes" and "ButAutomaticUpgrades: yes" like
> >           the debian backports archive since squeeze-backports.
> >
> >       priority 500
> >           to the versions that are not installed and do not belong to the
> >           target release.
> >
> >       priority 990
> >           to the versions that are not installed and belong to the target
> >           release.
> 
> 
> No consider I've set:
> 
> APT::Default-Release "stable";
> and have added stable and testing in sources list.
> 
> For package foo, the following versions are known:
> installed: 1.0
> stable: 1.0
> testing: 2.0
> 
> I'd conclude from the above that this means:
> 
> 1.0 == 100 (and not 990, as THIS version IS installed)
> 2.0 == 500 (as THIS version is NOT installed)
> 
> So the package should be upgraded, right? But it is not.
Obviously not. You first assign 100, but then this gets replaced by 990.
It's done exactly as the manual page says, not as human thinking may
suggest.

while(...) {
    if (...) pin = 1;
    if (...) pin = 100;
    if (...) pin = 500;
    if (...) pin = 900;
}
-- 
Julian Andres Klode  - Debian Developer, Ubuntu Member

See http://wiki.debian.org/JulianAndresKlode and http://jak-linux.org/.