On Thu, Jan 11, 2018 at 02:33:03PM +0900, Osamu Aoki wrote: > > i.e. if you want to match all packages of any architecture, *:* is > > OK just like *:any, but * alone is not. > > "*" alone seems to be treated as "*:native" (??and "*:all"??) > architectures. (apt-pkg/cacheset.cc) This code isn't involved in preferences parsing directly. Anyhow, a simple test would have shown that the premise of the bugreport is wrong, e.g. | Package: * | Pin: release n=experimental | Pin-Priority: 100 ALL packages (regardless of architecture) from experimental get pinned to 100. This is what the manpage calls a "generic-form". This is the same behaviour we had before and after MultiArch. Adapting documentation for this is thus not needed. Especially not in the suggested form as this will confuse users. If the first line is NOT "Package: *", even if you write "Package: *:*" this is NOT the "generic-form" but the "specific-form". The manpage seems pretty clear about that as well. For example: | Package: firefox | Pin: release n=experimental | Pin-Priority: 500 This one applies only to firefox:native (yes, this includes firefox:all, but that is a technical detail no "normal" user should ever be concerned with). Same if you write "firefox*". Specific stanzas behave similar to the commandline. It would just be pointless to have "apt install firefox*" try to install all firefox packages in all available architectures as that is guaranteed to end in failure and it seems the most sensible to have the same rules in preferences to not make this more complicated. (It is also backward compatible as someone with that pin coming from single arch wouldn't have liked apt (or more realistically aptitude) to suggest installing firefox:i386 on a amd64 in certain situations even if perfectly legal) > Other than these multiarch related syntax and regex syntax, I don't see > "Obsoletes" mentioned in dependency documentation but I see it in the > source. Obsolete is obsolete. Or, well, never really was existing, at least not in my time. It stems from a try to merge apt-rpm code. There is nothing to document about it as a) its not working in apt and b) it isn't working anywhere else (like dpkg) and perhaps most importantly c) it is completely undefined what it would mean in Debian. Also, it has no relation whatsoever to pinning, so not sure why it came up here… > Someone knowledgeable needs to update: > doc/apt_preferences.5.xml > doc/guide.dbk Make that doc/*. Am I hopeful that this will happen anytime soon given the current team size? No. I just wrote three new manpages. One of those says "was undocumented for years" (in the other two I didn't wrote it as they had at least a few bits documented elsewhere before). The last manpage I wrote before that has the same sentence. I am trying to write a few words about the things I add/change, just like I try to add a testcase for it – but personally, I think I am not particular good at writing documentation and what is perhaps worse is that if I touch a documentation task it usually ends in reworking the thing-to-be-documented. That "worked" with apt_auth.conf, apt-transport-mirror & -tor, but isn't really ideal (at least from a "get this documented soon and applicable to all apt versions preferably" point of view). So if you (or someone else) wants to work on it: Go a head, there is noone stopping you & we will try to help as best we can. No point in stomping your boots on the ground and demanding changes through. Best regards David Kalnischkies
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