Newsgroups:  gmane.linux.debian.user
Date:        Fri, 16 Sep 2005 22:54:10 -0400

I am using sarge with this apt.conf:

APT::Default-Release "stable";

I have configured testing/unstable as additional sources in sources.list. My /etc/apt/preferences file looks like this:

Explanation: Keep unstable priority below installed
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 80

I came across bug 317914 which prevented me from unpacking Linus' kernel tree, and I thought it might be a good idea to add a preferences rule like this:

Package: cogito
Pin: version 0.11.3*
Pin-Priority: -10

To my understanding, "apt-get remove cogito; apt-get install cogito" with these settings should install version 0.12.1 from unstable instead of the broken testing version 0.11.3+20050610-1.

However, I am still getting 0.11.3. I have tried many other variations (assigning high priority to 0.12.x, changing the rule order, using Pin: release instead of Pin: version, …), but always with the same outcome. So I ended up doing simply "apt-get -t unstable install cogito", but I'm not satisfied with that solution. I'd like to understand why I couldn't get the preferences to work as desired.

The idea is "In general I give low priority to unstable; but I don't like version X of package Y in testing and would rather use the unstable version of that package". How can this be cast into /etc/apt/preferences syntax?

Martin

> The idea is "In general I give low priority to unstable; but I don't
> like version X of package Y in testing and would rather use the unstable
> version of that package". How can this be cast into /etc/apt/preferences
> syntax?

apt-get -t unstable install cogito