[Aptitude-devel] Bug#964916: Option to allow packages from backports but without forcing it

[Thorsten Glaser]

On Sun, 12 Jul 2020, Pirate Praveen wrote:

> But gitlab is not in buster-backports

Then I don’t understand the problem.

> apt/aptitude -t buster-backports  install gitlab/buster-fasttrack does not work.

Why?

apt-get install gitlab/buster-fasttrack even should work,
in that case. Depends/Breaks would suffice to make it
select the right packages from the right suites.


>For example, ruby-nokogiri is available in buster-backports (built with
>ruby 2.5) and buster-fasttrack (built with ruby 2.7).

Wasn’t the rule that a package may only be in one of them,
and that it’s only eligible for fasttrack when it’s not in
backports?

># apt policy ruby-nokogiri
>ruby-nokogiri:
>  Installed: (none)
>  Candidate: 1.10.9+dfsg-1+fto10+1
>  Version table:
>     1.10.9+dfsg-1+fto10+1 500
>        500 https://fasttrack.debian.net/debian buster-fasttrack/main amd64 Packages
>     1.10.9+dfsg-1~bpo10+1 100
>        100 https://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports/main amd64 Packages
>     1.10.0+dfsg1-2 500
>        500 http://deb.debian.org/debian buster/main amd64 Packages

Well here you also run into the problem that apt prefers
the newest package.

It also looks like buster-fasttrack is not set up correctly:
its policy value is 500, not 100 (NotAutomatic: yes and
ButAutomaticUpgrades: yes).

Looking at the fasttrack documentation, it also tells users
to use a buster-backports repository from the fasttrack.debian.net
site, which is also all kinds of wrong.

But the installability problem has a different cause:

[…]
          Depends: ruby-faraday (>= 0.17.3~) but 0.15.4-3~bpo10+1 is to be installed
[…]
$ apt-cache policy ruby-faraday
ruby-faraday:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: 0.13.1-2
  Version table:
     0.15.4-3~bpo10+1 100
        100 http://mirror.lan.tarent.de/debian buster-backports/main amd64 Packages
     0.13.1-2 500
        500 http://mirror.lan.tarent.de/debian buster/main amd64 Packages
     0.9.2-3 500
        500 http://mirror.lan.tarent.de/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages

This package simply is not available in the version required.

bye,
//mirabilos
-- 
«MyISAM tables -will- get corrupted eventually. This is a fact of life. »
“mysql is about as much database as ms access” – “MSSQL at least descends
from a database” “it's a rebranded SyBase” “MySQL however was born from a
flatfile and went downhill from there” – “at least jetDB doesn’t claim to
be a database”	(#nosec)    ‣‣‣ Please let MySQL and MariaDB finally die!