> Read the apt_preferences(5) man page,
I did, but obviously not closely enough.
> set the pin for unstable to 100 < P <=500.
Done. However, after reading the man page I believe that I also
need to set testing to P > 1000 in order to enable downgrading
when the unstable or third-party package appears in testing.
> However, what on earth are you doing? Mixing up all three
> versions of Debian is NOT supported, and will eventually break
> in odd ways.
Easy: I want to
- use testing as the main distribution because it is generally
the best compromise between stability and up-to-dateness.
- use unstable or third-party repositories for software that
isn't in testing yet, but that I really want to have (like
KDE 3.2 when it is released in a couple of days).
- use stable for packages that have been discontinued in
testing and unstable, but for which security updates might
still appear in stable.
So now my /etc/apt/preferences file contains:
Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 1001
Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 400
Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 300
and I also created an /etc/apt/apt.conf containing
APT::Default-Release "testing";
though strictly speaking that appears to be redundant with the
above Pin-Priorities.
So if everything works as planned, I would e.g. add one of the
third-party KDE 3.2 repositories to /etc/apt/preferences with P =
350 when KDE 3.2 is released. That should allow me to install KDE
3.2 packages from the third-party repository to start with, but
later cause APT to automatically switch to the unstable and then
testing versions of those packages as they become available,
downgrading slightly if necessary.
Shouldn't that work? Please tell me why you believe that things
will break terribly if one uses more than two distributions, and
what you mean by "is NOT supported".
Thanks for your help,
Stefan
--
Stefan Baums
Asian Languages and Literature
University of Washington
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