[maemo-developers] Application Manager and Extras-devel: Dealing with unstable software

[From: Sarah Newman]

Hi,

Disclaimer: I have little practice with pinning packages.  If Maemo 
doesn't support this feature from Debian (haven't tried it yet,) then 
maybe it should.

It seems to me that explicitly installed packages from extras-devel 
could be pinned at a higher priority than extras.  The extras repository 
could have a priority of 1001 - high enough to downgrade installed 
pacakges. extras-devel has some lower priority.

When downgrading from extras-devel to extras, remove the pin on the 
extras-devel version and reinstall.

By default, when installing or upgrading packages, they should come from 
extras and not extras-devel since extras has a higher priority.

Unfortunately I don't know what apt will do with the dependencies of the 
explicitly pinned extras-devel packages.  Might try this in scratchbox 
later and see what happens.

Presumably there would be another screen in AM with a list of pinned 
packages, what they were pinned to, and the option to remove the pin.

References:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html
http://wiki.debian.org/AptPinning
http://debian-book-bg.openfmi.net/queue/apt-pinning.html

gary liquid wrote:
> i do not think there is ever a perfect way for anything.
> there are many points which intersect and by discussion we will find that
> common ground :)
> 
> using the .install file to opt-in to a testing program is great,
> opting back out is trickier, it would have to be something on the update
> information screen itself.
> 
> there is also the problem with dependencies, but they could be handled in a
> similar manner.
> 
> gary