I delayed my daily 'fix' of new packages :) to experiment a little with pinning, Default-Release, apt-get upgrade and apt-show-versions.
I'm posting my interpretation of the findings - please speak up if you know better! In summary, it seems that using pinning and Default-Release gives you different behaviour for apt-get upgrade [*]: - If you pin to testing (using lines in /etc/apt/preferences), 'apt-get upgrade' will only upgrade those packages which are newer in testing. If you have installed something manually from unstable, that version will stay the same on your system until a newer version has propogated into testing. - If you select APT::Default-Release "testing"; in /etc/apt/apt.conf, 'apt-get upgrade' will also upgrade unstable versions of packages. Newly selected packages will be installed from testing (if they are available). Question: If a package that was being tracked in unstable makes it into testing, does it now get tracked in testing? On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 07:11:31PM -0800, tluxt wrote: > I am particularly concerned about ensuring apt-get upgrade works properly, > and simply - ie, > not having extra-normal things to do for the person doing the upgrade. My systems have used the pinning method up until now, with me manually upgrading unstable versions. I'll switch to APT::Default-Release and see how it behaves. > [Note: On my several months old Woody install, > in /etc/apt I have no file called apt.conf . > I do have there a directory apt.conf.d that has one file in it: > 70debconf > In this case, what I exactly need to do is create the file > /etc/apt/apt.conf, and put in it only the following line, correct? > APT::Default-Release "testing";] Yes, that's right. > ======================================= > From: Christoph Martin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: apt-show-versions > > apt-show-versions is a script which eases maintenance of mixed > stable/testing or testing/unstable systems. While beeing able to > update the packages from your *main* distribution with apt-get upgrade > it is quite difficult to do the same for the *not-main* > packages. While you can use the pinning feature of apt if these are > only a few it is quite annoying to put all the package names in > apt/preferences which should be pinned. Like in one of my installation > where I have 247 packages from stable and 229 from testing. [...] > > apt-get install `apt-show-versions -u -b | fgrep unstable` > > to upgrade all unstable packages to their newest versions. Christoph, have you tried APT::Default-Release? Does that not do this job automatically? (I'm not saying apt-show-versions is not useful; I'm just curious, and apt-show-versions does far more than just the job of tracking both testing and unstable versions). HTH, Chris ----------------- [*] If you're interested in how I got this result: I used my workstation which has a mixture of testing and unstable packages installed. I ran apt-get update, and for each of the senarios I ran: # apt-get -s upgrade 1. With pinning in /etc/apt/preferences: 11 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. - The packages to be upgraded were all in testing. The unstable packages I had installed were to be left alone. 2. With no pinning, APT::Default-Release set to testing: 45 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded. - All of the testing packages were listed again, plus other packages where I had installed an unstable version and there was a new version available in unstable. 3. With no pinning, APT::Default-Release set to unstable or not present at all: 116 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 3 not upgraded. - This time all packages would have been upgraded to their latest unstable version, regardless of whether I had the testing or unstable version installed. -- Chris Halls | Frankfurt, Germany
