[Piuparts-devel] Bug#676694: piuparts: [install-upgrade] should first install from distribution

[Andreas Beckmann]

Hi Luca,

I see what you try to achieve. I've been working on some initial patches
for these problems, but won't have time to get anything finished for 0.45.

The problem is something like

* you want to test new.deb which is part of new.changes
* new.deb is not in that archive, yet (but some old version is)
* new.deb depends on more packages from new.changes
* but you don't want to test all from new.changes at the same time

So you provide a new package source that contains all the packages from
new.changes, but that repository is only to be used when new.deb is to
be installed. I'll use the codename 'target' for this partial repository
(and the repository I'll call target-repository):

with this you can do

install tests:
  sid+target
  wheezy+target

upgrade tests (that's where your "problem" started):
  sid -> target
  wheezy -> target

distupgrade tests:
  wheezy -> sid -> target
  wheezy -> sid+target (skipping the installation of the version in sid)
  squeeze -> wheezy -> sid -> target
  squeeze -> wheezy -> sid+target
  squeeze -> sid+target

Having multiple versions of the same package available at the same time
is difficult for apt and piuparts - you might work around this with
careful pinning and custom scripts that change the pin priorities during
the test to switch the version apt will select.
Check the readme, there are several environment variables that allow a
script to discover when it is being run.


Andreas