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APT_PREFERENCES(5)

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NAME    [Toc]    [Back]

       apt_preferences - Preference control file for APT

DESCRIPTION    [Toc]    [Back]

       The  APT  preferences  file controls various aspects of the APT system.
       It is meant to be user editable and manipulatable  from	software.  The
       file  consists of a number of records formed like the dpkg status file,
       space seperated sections of text with at the start of  each  line  tags
       seperated by a colon. It is stored in /etc/apt/preferences.

VERSIONING    [Toc]    [Back]

       One  purpose  of  the  preferences file is to let the user select which
       version of a package will be installed. This selection can be made in a
       number  of  ways  that fall into three categories, version, release and
       origin.

       Selection by version can be done by exact match or  prefix  match.  The
       format  is  2.1.2 or 2.2* for a prefix match. Matching by prefix can be
       used to ignore the r in the Debian release versioning, like 2.1r* or to
       ignore Debian specific revisions, 1.1-*.  When matching versions with a
       prefix the highest matching version will always be picked.

       Selection by release is more complicated and has three forms. The  primary
  purpose  of  release  selections is to identify a set of packages
       that match a specific vendor, or release (ie Debian 2.1). The first two
       forms  are  shortcuts intended for quick command line use. If the first
       character of the specification is a digit then it is considered to be a
       release	version match, otherwise a release label match. Specifications
       which contain equals are full release data  matches  and  are  a  comma
       seperated  list	of  one  letter keys followed by an equals then by the
       string. Examples:


       v=2.1*,o=Debian,c=main
       l=Debian
       a=stable


       The data for these matches are taken from the Release  files  that  APT
       downloads during an update. The available keys are:

       a= Archive
	      This  is the common name we give our archives, such as stable or
	      unstable. The special name now is used to designate the  set  of
	      packages that are currently installed.

       c= Component
	      Referes  to the sub-component of the archive, main, contrib etc.
	      Component may be omitted if there are no components for this archive.


       v= Version
	      This  is	a  version  string  with the same properties as in the
	      Packages file.  It represents the release level of the  archive.
	      Typical Debian release numbers look like 2.1r2 with the r designating
 the release of 2.1. New releases are limited to  security
	      updates and other important changes.

       o= Origin
	      This  specifies  who  is	providing this archive. In the case of
	      Debian the string will read  Debian.  Other  providers  may  use
	      their own string.



       l= Label
	      This  carries  the encompassing name of the distribution.
	      For Debian proper this field reads  Debian.  For	derived
	      distributions it should contain their proper name.


       The final selection method is by origin. This is simply the site
       name of the originating package files. The empty string is  used
       for file URIs.

       Version selection, particularly the latter two methods, are used
       in many different parts of APT, not just the preferences file.

CANDIDATE VERSION POLICY    [Toc]    [Back]

       Internally APT maintains a list of all  available  versions  for
       all packages.  If you place multiple releases or vendors in your
       sources.list(5) file  then  these  features  are  available.  By
       default	APT  selects  the  highest  version  from all automatic
       sources. Some sources, such as project/experimental  are  marked
       Not  Automatic - these fall to the bottom of the selection pile.

       When deciding what version to use APT assigns a priority to each
       available version of the package. It then does two things, first
       it selects the highest priorty version that is  newer  than  the
       installed  version  of  the package, then it selects the highest
       priority version that is older than the installed version. Next,
       if the older versions have a priority greater than 1000 they are
       compared with the  priority  of	the  upgrade  set,  the  larger
       becomes	the  selected  result. Otherwise the downgrade versions
       are ignored and the highest  priority  of  the  ugprade	set  is
       selected.

       It is possible to think of the priorities in strata:

       1000 and up
	      Downgradable priorities

       1000   The downgrade prevention barrier

       100 to 1000
	      Standard	priorities.  990  is  the  priority  set by the
	      --target-release	apt-get(8) option. 989 is the start for
	      auto  priorities	and  500  are  all  the default package
	      files.

       100    The currently installed version

       0 to 100
	      Non automatic priorities. These  are  only  used	if  the
	      package  is  not	installed and there is no other version
	      available.

       less than 0
	      The version is never selected.


       Giving a pin a priority greater than  1000  will  allow	APT  to
       downgrade in order to get to that version.

       Each  package may be pinned to a specific version and each Packages
 file has a priority for every package inside.  The	highest
       priority assigned to a package is the one that is used.

       A package pin looks like this:


       Package: apt
       Pin: version 0.4.0
       Pin-Priority: 1001

       The  first  line specifies the package, the second gives the Pin
       specification and the last gives the priority of this  pin.  The
       first  word  of the pin specification may be version, release or
       origin, the remainder of the field is described in the  Versioning
 section above.

       A  default  pin	is how the priorities of package files are set.
       Any number of default pins may be specified, the first  matching
       default	will  select  the  priority  of  the package file. Only
       release or origin may be used in  the  Pin  specification  since
       they match Packages files.


       Package: *
       Pin: release v=2.1*
       Pin-Priority: 998


       If  the Pin-Priority field is omitted then the priority defaults
       to 989 for both cases.

   INTERESTING EFFECTS    [Toc]    [Back]
       Due to the downgrade prevention barrier at priority 1000  it  is
       possible  that  a lower priority version will be selected if the
       higher priority would cause a downgrade. For instance, if  package
  foo has versions 1.2, 1.1 and 1.0 installed, with 1.1 being
       the currently installed version and the priorities of each  version
 being 900, 100 and 950 repectively the winning version will
       be 1.2.

       In practice this is often desired. A user may use a default  pin
       to  make  the  stable  distribution the default and then use the
       --target-dist option with apt-get(8) to	select	newer  versions
       from  unstable. The packages that have been upgraded to unstable
       will continue to follow	the  versions  that  are  available  in
       unstable  since the stable versions now fall below the downgrade
       prevention barrier.

       If this is not desired then a default pin should be used to make
       unstable have a priority less than 100.

       Users  of  3rd  party  add  ons such as Helix GNOME can use this
       mechanism to force the usage of Helix  packages,  or  force  the
       usage  of Debian packages by setting the priority of that source
       sufficiently high. It is even possible to  mass	downgrade  from
       one  set  of packages to another by using a priority larger than
       1000.

SEE ALSO    [Toc]    [Back]

      
      
       apt-cache(8) apt.conf(5)

BUGS    [Toc]    [Back]

       See the APT bug page <URL:http://bugs.debian.org/apt>.	If  you
       wish	to    report	a    bug    in	  APT,	  please    see
       /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the bug(1) command.

AUTHOR    [Toc]    [Back]

       APT was written by the APT team <apt@packages.debian.org>.



				 12 March 2001		    APT_PREFERENCES(5)
[ Back ]
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