Hi Simon, Simon Richter wrote: > it would be nice if there was a way to find packages whose local version is > higher than the version from the archive that would be selected,
Aptitude is quite flexible and this is already possible. :-) My shell has the following alias (and there is the idea to put this one and others as small scripts into the aptitude or an add-on package): alias aptitude-newer-than-in-archive='aptitude -o "Aptitude::Pkg-Display-Limit=~i ?any-version(!~O.) !~U !~o"' > possibly as a new toplevel group "Downgradeable Packages". Should be possible as well already. It might not be perfect yet, but I have the following in my /etc/apt/apt.conf: Aptitude::UI { Default-Grouping "pattern(~i ?any-version(!~O.) !~U !~o => Non-upgradable packages not from archive, ?true ||),filter(missing),status,section(subdir,passthrough),pattern(~O, !~O => other),pattern(~A, !~A => other),section(topdir),priority"; } There's though a chance that this group then includes packages which are actually upgradable, but just to packages where the repo or package has a pinning lower than 100. IIRC there were cases where this caught packages in cases like the pinning constellation mentionend below or at least similar cases as the package with pinning below 100 are not considered for upgrading: Pinning Source Package version 990 sid 1.2.3 100 local 1.2.3+local ← would match 90 autobuild 1.2.4~autobuild No more sure. Worked good enough for me, so I use it that way for years now. :-) Regards, Axel -- ,''`. | Axel Beckert <a...@debian.org>, https://people.debian.org/~abe/ : :' : | Debian Developer, ftp.ch.debian.org Admin `. `' | 4096R: 2517 B724 C5F6 CA99 5329 6E61 2FF9 CD59 6126 16B5 `- | 1024D: F067 EA27 26B9 C3FC 1486 202E C09E 1D89 9593 0EDE