[Gnumed-devel] re: newest apt preferences and apt-cache policy results (suitable for lenny)

[James Busser]

OK I have now figured it out... new preferences attached...

What I  discovered was that:

1) the reason that Pin-Priority: 501 was not working was because apt  
preferences does not understand the release name ("lenny") therefore  
if it is desired to pin according to release then the version must be  
used and not the release name... this should protect against the next  
release becoming the new "stable"

2) if the apt preferences file pins only gnumed-client to testing,  
apt-get will want to source gnumed-common and gnumed-doc from the  
default release instead of testing, and this would generate the  
conflict shown at bottom.

The new version of the preferences file fixes these two problems.  
Unfortunately the Package field seems to understand neither wildcards  
nor regular expressions and thus the other packages had to be added  
individually. While it is true we could omit the gnumed-specific  
pinning and instead (from the command line) simply do
   apt-get install -t testing gnumed-client
a preferences file placed in /etc/apt/ on each worker's machine in a  
praxis would allow an admin user (either a sudoer or someone trusted  
to know a common root password for the praxis *desktop* machines) to  
update the gnumed client by using Synaptic and that way not even have  
to go into a terminal session.

If you are running lenny, try this preference file and then from a  
terminal as sudo or root run
        apt-cache policy
and it will hopefully work as described :-)

==========================================
Here is what you get if you pin only gnumed-client to testing:

debian:/home/jbusser# apt-get install gnumed-client
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  gnumed-client: Depends: gnumed-common (= 0.3.10-1) but 0.2.8.10-1  
is to be installed
                 Depends: gnumed-doc (= 0.3.10-1) but 0.2.8.10-1 is  
to be installed
E: Broken packages
debian:/home/jbusser#

PS to Andreas I never run as root without remembering your warning, I  
only just created this VM and did not yet get my regular user added  
to sudoers :-)

preferences.octet-stream
Description: Binary data