[Aptitude-devel] Bug#834967: say -t is different than /

[Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo]

Control: tags -1 + wontfix
Control: close -1


Hi,

2016-08-21 06:21 積丹尼 Dan Jacobson:
>Package: aptitude
>Version: 0.8.3-1
>Severity: wishlist
>File: /usr/share/man/man8/aptitude-curses.8.gz
>
>At
>
>       -t <release>, --target-release <release>
>           Set the release from which packages should be installed. For
>           instance, "aptitude -t experimental ..."  will install packages
>           from the experimental distribution unless you specify otherwise.
>
>           This will affect the default candidate version of packages
>           according to the rules described in apt_preferences(5).
>
>           This corresponds to the configuration item APT::Default-Release.
>
>please remind the user that -t is not the same as "/"
>
>           To select a particular version of the package, append "=<version>"
>           to the package name: for instance, "aptitude install apt=0.3.1".
>           Similarly, to select a package from a particular archive, append
>           "/<archive>" to the package name: for instance, "aptitude install
>           apt/experimental". You cannot specify both an archive and a version
>           for a package.

This is documented in apt_preferences, as referred in the aptitude
documentation.  One sets the default release to get packages from the
given release with a given priority, the other only select the given
version to upgrade a package, while leaving the rest at the same
priority as defined in config files.

I think that the current documentation is correct, thus closing as
+wontfix.


>and that they should use "/" for cases like:
>[...]
># aptitude -t unstable reinstall $@
>The following packages will be REINSTALLED:
>  midori

I am not sure what you want to achieve there, but the appropriate action
depends if one wants to only consider a given version of a package or to
install/upgrade several packages from a different suite, so there's no
right rule for all cases.

In particular, it doesn't seem to make much sense to me to attempt to
reinstall a package passing neither -t suite nor /suite, even if
aptitude allows that, because conceptually "reinstall" is mostly to
install the same version again.

But as usual with aptitude, it doesn't attempt to limit the possibility
to do slightly or outright odd things :)

-- 
Manuel A. Fernandez Montecelo <manuel.montezelo at gmail.com>