Aptitude mixed-install/apt-pinning integration
Mentor: Daniel Burrows ?
Summary: High-level support of mixed-installs (eg. testing/unstable) and apt-pinning in Aptitude
Required skills:
- good understanding of the tiered stable/testing/unstable/experimental system works
- good experience of packages transitions between distributions
- understanding of debian packages dependencies system
Description: Using the apt-pinning system is complicated. One has to edit the /etc/apt/preferences files, without really knowing the impact of each specific rules. Explicitely integrating apt-pinning in Aptitude would be the beginning of a solution.
A simple preferences file editor of course is not enough. We would like a good visualization of how each pinning rule changes the packages version choices in the resolver. This can mean particular highlighting in the versions list of a package or specific views explaining which specific set of packages (coming from the same source package for example, or depending on a specific package, etc.) is subject to an apt-pinning exception.
The goal here is to give a clear view to the user of what is going on on a debian install which may have multiple distributions, or unofficial archives with packages that already exist in main (backports, debian-multimedia, winehq, developer personal repositories, ... ubuntu PPAs). This is particularly useful to power users and developers.