[Pkg-puppet-devel] Bug#532398: trying to pull packages from backports may introduce 'dependency hell'

[Jayen Ashar]

Matthew Palmer wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 10, 2009 at 11:40:49AM +1000, Jayen Ashar wrote:
>> Matthew Palmer wrote:
> 
> From http://backports.org/debian/dists/lenny-backports/Release:
> 
> NotAutomatic: yes
> 
> Join the dots from there.
> 
>> The bug report didn't include my apt_preferences, which contains:
>>   Package: *
>>   Pin: release a=lenny-backports
>>   Pin-Priority: 200
> 
> Which almost certainly doesn't do what you want, as per apt_preferences(5).

If I didn't override the Pin-Priority, then "NotAutomatic: yes" would 
give it a Pin-Priority of 1, right?  That, as per apt_preferences(5), 
causes a version to be installed only if there is no installed version 
of the package.

This isn't what I want.  I want to install something from backports, 
then track updates in backports, so I set the Pin-Priority to 200, 
which, as per apt_preferences(5), causes a version to be installed 
unless there is a version available belonging to some other distribution 
or the installed version is more recent.

But we digress.  How can I use puppet+apt to track backports for some 
packages, while using official debian repos for most packages?

Thanks,
Jayen