Re: "NotAutomatic: yes" does not affect source packages

On 2023-06-27 Christof Warlich <[email protected]> wrote:
> I hope I’m not completely OT asking this here:

> I just learned that the Debian backports repos are marked "NotAutomatic:
> yes" (and “ButAutomaticUpgrades: yes”), which is really handy as it
> allows to always keep a suitable backports entry in sources.list, while
> still being able to only install _/specific/_ backports packages by
> using apt’s -t command-line switch. But while this works just fine for
> binary packages, it seems to fail for source packages: They are treated
> as if the backports repo is just an ordinary repo, i.e. an “apt-get
> source –download-only <some-package>” always downloads the (more recent)
> package from the backports repo _/despite/_ the fact that it is
> “NotAutomatic: yes”.

> Can anyone tell why source packages are not treated the same as binary
> packages for “NotAutomatic: yes” repos? It breaks the expectation that
> you always get the corresponding sources for a binary package.
[...]

Hello,

it is impossible to get right. For *most* of the sources you will *not*
have the binary installed since you will only install a small percentage
of the Debian archive. So you need to think about how to handle this
anyway. Also the exact source version might not be
available at all (you have not run apt upgrade for some time and the
archive moved on). On top of that NotAutomatic: is essentially built to
influence apt-get "priorities". These can also be set on a per (binary)
package basis and it is therefore possible to prioritize different
versions/repositories for two binary packages built from the same
source. - Which source should be fetched then?

(This is not backport specific,, you also get this with experimental
sources on a sid system.)

cu Andreas
-- 
`What a good friend you are to him, Dr. Maturin. His other friends are
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