On Sat, 13 Oct 2001, Joey Hess wrote: > Wrapping your head around how the /etc/apt/preferences files work, > especially with all the numeric values, is a real pain. A lot of users end > up asking on debian-user for examples of such files. The two most common > things they want to do are surely:
Well, I was hoping someone would have made a tool to entire this data by now.. > X-Comment: This example /etc/apt/preferences file causes the system to > X-Comment: track testing (or whatever is specified after "a="). Packages > X-Comment: may be upgraded individually to their unstable versions, and > X-Comment: apt will then track the unstable version. See apt_preferences(5) > X-Comment: for details. Mm, you won't get that effect if you use -10, you have to use something higher than 100. Basically, to get what you describe, it is sufficient to put APT::Default-Release "testing"; in apt.conf (-t command line option). To eliminate unstable from selection it is equally effective to remove it from the sources.list. The preferences file's default option is really only super-useful if you want to do complicated selections involving non-debian sources, that was why I added it. Jason
