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

[Thorsten Glaser]

On Sun, 12 Jul 2020, Pirate Praveen wrote:

> > It also looks like buster-fasttrack is not set up correctly:
> > its policy value is 500, not 100 (NotAutomatic: yes and
> > ButAutomaticUpgrades: yes).
> 
> That is because we don't really expect the packages to be upgradable to next
> stable version (because these packages will not be in any stable release).

That’s no excuse to not set these two settings. You definitely ought
to set NotAutomatic: yes because otherwise, merely *adding* the repo
can cause packages from fasttrack to be installed that the user did
not explicitly select to install from there. And ButAutomaticUpgrades: yes
is needed to be able to upgrade once NotAutomatic: yes is set.

Until this is done, fasttrack is to be classified as dangerous.

> > 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.

> Why? There are times when we can't have a package in official backports
> immediately (transitions, backports-new). This is temporary repository. These
> gets removed when they are accepted in official backports.

[…]

> Because you did not add buster-backports suite.

Erm… I did add buster-backports, the official one.

You absolutely cannot have a thing called buster-backports on the
fasttrack server because that’s too easily confused with the
official one.

Erk. I don’t even want to continue looking at fasttrack now.

bye,
//mirabilos
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