How to exclude specific packages from upgrading?

[rs55]

Is there a way to exclude - in particular - the minstall package - from upgrading?
I currently have all MX and Antix upgrades turned off ( unchecked in repo list). Because the latest version of the MX installer - is designed for people who want to tweak the OS and respin it. It breaks down for end users who want to use it to simply install on their own systems - and appears to have introduced some new bugs that freeze the process intermittently( I had a separate thread on this issue).
I expect at some point I will want to re-enable the MX and Antix upgrades. But definitely dont want to "upgrade" the MX installer which makes the system unusable for me.

[Stevo]

The simplest method is to lock the package in Synaptic. Note that aptitude will not respect this lock if you happen to use that.

[kmathern]

The simplest method is to lock the package in Synaptic. Note that aptitude will not respect this lock if you happen to use that.

Aptitude (and apt / apt-get) will respect the packages locked (pinned) in Synaptic if you add a symlink between /var/lib/synaptic/preferences & /etc/apt/preferences.d.

Code: Select all

sudo ln -sf /var/lib/synaptic/preferences /etc/apt/preferences.d/synaptic-pins

[asqwerth]

In other words, reenable the repos, and only update with Synaptic, not mx-updater.

From Synaptic, you can lock minstall. Or you can manually untick minstall whenever you see it in the list of updateable packages.

[Adrian]

I would recommend against locking updating packages (especially when it comes to MX packages), God knows how many big and small bugs I fixed in the packages I take care off, without examining the code and maybe the changelogs you'd know know what was fixed, if you need to upgrade and why.

I certainly can understand the desire to keep things as they were when they were working "just right" but probably the best way is figuring out what went wrong, sometimes bugs are introduced, but most of the times bugs are fixed. Ultimately it's a matter of trust, if you don't trust the developers to fix the bugs (fix more bugs than they introduce) what makes you trust them that the current version is the "best version that you'll ever need"? Instead of locking a package it would be better to provide a good bug report and the next version would fix the newly introduced bug, you can certainly pin a package to specific version that works for you as a temporary solution, but I don't think this is a good idea in the long run. Let's say this bug remains not fixed in the installer, that means you'll be cut off from future versions of MX since you'll not be able to install them properly, wouldn't it be better to find and fix the bug instead?

[asqwerth]

Adrian, r55 has been patiently posting bug reports for minstall.

Problem is his present issue can't seem as yet to be reproduced.

Bitjam and the rest are still working on it.

[Adrian]

I know, I'm the one of the people working on it. I didn't imply anything or criticize the user, I merely pointed out that trying to pin a package might be counterproductive in the long term, if we don't fix this problem he will be cut from future MX versions.