[Bug 565364] Re: pinning a specific package does not work

[Michal Suchanek]

It's so because pinning is buggy.

It's meant to pin both up and down, both * and specific packages, it is
described so in the man page, and it does not work:

 APT also supports pinning by glob() expressions and regular expressions surrounded by /. For example, the following example
       assigns the priority 500 to all packages from experimental where the name starts with gnome (as a glob()-like expression)
       or contains the word kde (as a POSIX extended regular expression surrounded by slashes).

           Package: gnome* /kde/
           Pin: release n=experimental
           Pin-Priority: 500

Package: xserver-xorg*
Pin: release o=LP-PPA-xorg-edgers,a=natty,n=natty
Pin-priority: 300

xserver-xorg-core:
  Installed: 2:1.10.2.902-1ubuntu3
  Candidate: 2:1.10.3.902+git20110815+server-1.10-branch.4597f201-0ubuntu0sarvatt~natty
  Package pin: 2:1.10.3.902+git20110815+server-1.10-branch.4597f201-0ubuntu0sarvatt~natty
  Version table:
     2:1.10.3.902+git20110815+server-1.10-branch.4597f201-0ubuntu0sarvatt~natty 300
        990 http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu/ natty/main amd64 Packages
 *** 2:1.10.2.902-1ubuntu3 300
        400 http://archive.ubuntu.mirror.dkm.cz/ oneiric/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2:1.10.1-1ubuntu1.2 300
        990 http://archive.ubuntu.mirror.dkm.cz/ natty-updates/main amd64 Packages
     2:1.10.1-1ubuntu1 300
        990 http://archive.ubuntu.mirror.dkm.cz/ natty/main amd64 Packages
     2:1.9.2.901+git20101129+server-1.9-branch.65f2ab20-0ubuntu0sarvatt2~maverick 300
        292 http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ppa/ubuntu/ maverick/main amd64 Packages
     2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7.3 300
        300 http://archive.ubuntu.mirror.dkm.cz/ maverick-updates/main amd64 Packages
     2:1.9.0-0ubuntu7 300
        300 http://archive.ubuntu.mirror.dkm.cz/ maverick/main amd64 Packages

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/565364

Title:
  pinning a specific package does not work

Status in “apt” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed
Status in “apt” package in Debian:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: apt

  "Package: *" in /etc/apt/preferences works for pinning as expected.
  "Package: nano" should work, but currently does not.  This is already
  known in Debian (c.f. http://bugs.debian.org/317186).  Setting this
  ticket to confirmed.

  Specifying only part of the package name is currently unsupported.
  There is an RFE ticket in Debian to include support for this:
  http://bugs.debian.org/121132 which is tracked in LP bug 399474

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