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Hold package until upgrade to next major version

ph flag
David Woitkowski

I installed a package of thisprogram from a PPA which offers nightly builds. So my version of thisprogramis getting updated every day. Most of these updates, however, are of no importance to me -- if they contain any changes at all. The packages of the last days had the versions

thisprogram 3.5.1-develop-0~20211212
thisprogram 3.5.1-develop-0~20211213
thisprogram 3.5.1-develop-0~20211214

However, some of the nightly builds are broken. So on 12/13/2021, I got a broken version installed and it was a real ### to use thisprogram that day. Fortunately on 12/14/2021 the next version worked again.

What did I do to prevent this in the future? Easy: When a working version was installed the next day, I did

sudo apt-mark hold thisprogram

So now, all the next versions of 3.5.1-develop-0~blablabla are skipped for me.

Now my question: Some time in the near future, the developers will issue version 3.5.2 or even 3.6 of thisprogram. Is there a way to automatically install that next "major" version and then again skip all the next nightly builds?

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pLumo avatar
in flag
pLumo
Isn't this the purpose of a nightly? Why do you want to use this `ppa` then? Regarding your question, I don't know of a solution.
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ph flag
David Woitkowski
@pLumo In short: Becaus the devs do not offer any other `ppa`. The alternative would be to update manually. As `thisprogram` is under active development, that would be more work than I would like to do.
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user535733 avatar Ubuntu
cn flag
user535733

Apt-marking and Apt-pinning are the existing tools to accomplish what you seek.

Apt is not psychic nor clever. It doesn't know if the software in the package will work or not. It doesn't understand the concept of skipping versions or making decisions based on certain version numbers. It doesn't know your intent. It only knows if you instructed it to hold/pin a package or not.

You, as a community member, have the power to package that software for Debian (and thence to Ubuntu) or as a Snap so others can enjoy the software without the risk of using nightly test builds. Ubuntu software is mostly packaged by volunteers like you.

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