On 16 November 2012 20:36, Axel Beckert <a...@debian.org> wrote: > We used cron-apt before for a long time. It just does upgrades or mail > about pending upgrades and as far as I know you can't tell them that > they should upgrade some packages and some not.
On a single system, possible, since you basically specify the complete apt command line(s). When trying to use a central config plus local tweaks that is definitely not easy :-) > pkgsync is much closer to what we have in mind with aptitude-robot and > after looking at the source code, I must admit that the way it uses > aptitude is very close to ours. (From the description alone it looked > less like what we have in mind.) I had somewhat imagined the setup you later describe, though with your details I can easily see how a declarative syntax would also have to be rather complex to handle that level of local-system overriding and so on. I once had a pipe dream of a declarative syntax that would support default actions and package lists (like pkgsel's “make sure these are installed, and these others are not”) with local overrides, and it ended up looking a lot like apt_preferences :-/ >> Clearly this program is simply meant as an automated interface to >> aptitude, although I think that most use cases would be covered by >> pkgsync if also supported list of packages to *not* upgrade. > > As you noticed, the main difference to pkgsync is that aptitude-robot > allows to automatically upgrade most packages but to not automatically > upgrade some explicitly listed packages. > > To make that easier with different sets of hosts or single hosts which > need indiviual changes we use run-parts to read in the package lists > from multiple, ordered files. I had assumed that pkgsync supported a similar run-parts type config, allowing local overrides, etc.. But anyway, it can't do what you want unless you can override the default to “upgrade all packages” with “but not package X and Y on some host.” (Also the inability to control holds and such.) Well I wish you gentlemen success. It seems that you already have quite a useful tool to work with. >> Any ideas how it could synchronize with the periodic apt script that >> performs update, clean, etc.? > > From our experience there is an inherent problem between multiple > tools handling automatic package list updates and package upgrades > stepping on each others toes. Indeed. > But our discussion about how to reply to this question just gave us > the idea that we may be able to run aptitude-robot triggered by apt > periodic. We'll investigate this idea. If only it had a hook to run post-update and pre-clean … > >> From aptitude-robot-session: >> >> > # yes "" forces the default answer to any configuration question >> > nice yes "" | /usr/sbin/aptitude-robot >> >> Have you considered something more explicit, such as: >> >> # aptitude -y -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confdef \ >> -o DPkg::Options::=--force-confold … > > Good point! Thanks. Note that the dpkg options are ignored when aptitude tries “dpkg --configure -a” to fix a failed install. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/257279 Regards -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-wnpp-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/CAN3veRfuzjnjMxqUQ3jnBq6mmoNwOUSGxJAMKxRZ+=nrg-e...@mail.gmail.com