Package: autopkgtest
Version: 5.10
Severity: normal
The setup-testbed script supplied with autopkgtest always rewrites
/etc/apt/sources.list, based on the following assumptions:
- if environment variables MIRROR and RELEASE are not provided, then the ID
from /etc/os-release appears in the apt sources.list, and the lines that
mention it are suitable for extracting the mirror and release
(suite/codename)
- if the name of the mirror mentions "ubuntu", then the mirror has
the same pockets and components as Ubuntu: the release itself, and the
updates and security pockets, each with main, restricted, universe and
multiverse components
- otherwise the mirror is set up like Debian (old)*stable, testing and
unstable: it has a single standalone suite (the release) with main,
contrib and non-free components
This is inconvenient if you are testing a non-Debian, non-Ubuntu Debian
derivative, or if you are testing an overlay suite like -backports or
experimental, or if you want to enable security apt sources for Debian
or proposed-updates for Ubuntu, or if you want to use incoming.debian.org.
It would be useful to be able to get the other functionality of the setup
script (in particular speeding up dpkg, setting up the serial consoles for
autopkgtest-virt-qemu and installing packages that autopkgtest assumes
will be present) without rewriting /etc/apt/sources.list.
Possible alternatives:
- an environment variable that can be set nonempty to assume that the
sources.list is already correct
- an environment variable pointing to a file containing a replacement
sources.list
- an environment variable with the multi-line contents of a replacement
sources.list
All of those are straightforward to implement, so I might just implement
all of them rather than choosing one.
smcv
