[Bug 1208820] Re: Pinning preferences do not override eachother as expected

[David Kalnischkies]

Yes, that is indeed the case, but that is mainly the fault of the PPA as
experimental software should by definition not be part of a release. I
know that this kinda contradicts the PPA concept used in the wild (at
least what I am observing from the outside) as stuff is put into a
release-pocket because it was built for this release, not because it is
a particular good idea to use it (in this release), but it is the way
APT assumes repositories to be handled way before PPAs were introduced –
and as APT can't change its default handling, PPAs (and their users) get
what they asked for.

That APT::Default-Release is overriding pinning is a very important
concept, as it allows you to get stuff from experimental/backports
easily. That it is set in Ubuntu by default is probably a try to protect
people with the effect of opening another can of worms – in the end a
choice between the devil and the deep blue sea (ftr: German phrase "Wahl
zwischen Pest und Cholera").

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1208820

Title:
  Pinning preferences do not override eachother as expected

Status in “apt” package in Ubuntu:
  Opinion

Bug description:
  When some pinning rules are added in /etc/apt/preferences.d/ the
  priority values of the rules that matches first are used.

  Take this example:

  Package: *
  Pin: release n=raring
  Pin-Priority: 990

  Package: *
  Pin: release o=LP-PPA-my-raring-ppa
  Pin-Priority: 50

  Results in all packages of my-raring-ppa to have a priority of 990.
  (This can be 'fixed' by reverting these two sets of pinning rules)

  
  Furthermore, if

  APT::Default-Release "raring";

  is used (default in /etc/apt/apt/config.d/01ubuntu), all raring
  packages have a priority of 990 and

  Package: *
  Pin: release o=LP-PPA-my-raring-ppa
  Pin-Priority: 50

  is not working anymore to set/lower the priority of the my-raring-ppa
  packages to 50.

  
  The latter is quite a problem, as this prevents pinning from working properly (IMO).
  I do not know whether there are two problems
    1) APT::Default-Release is precessed after the preferences
    2) Order of pinning rules is reverse-chronological

  , or that both problems have the same origin.

  $ apt-cache policy apt
  apt:
    Installed: 0.9.7.7ubuntu4
    Candidate: 0.9.7.7ubuntu4
    Version table:
       0.9.9.1~ubuntu2 0
           50 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ saucy/main amd64 Packages
   *** 0.9.7.7ubuntu4 0
          990 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main amd64 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

  $ lsb_release -rd
  Description:    Ubuntu 13.04
  Release:        13.04

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