apt/apt-pkg/policy.cc, branch 3.3.0

apt: modernize to make_unique C++17

2026-04-08T10:41:43Z

References: - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/79700634/pros-and-cons-of-make-unique-vs-direct-constructor-call-in-c17 - https://towardsdev.com/why-std-make-unique-beats-new-in-modern-c-7e2ba653737e - https://www.sololearn.com/en/Discuss/3334779/where-make_unique-is-better-than-unique_ptrraw-pointer

Fix Phased-Update-Percentage probability mistake

2026-04-07T09:34:15Z

Previously a package with Phased-Update-Percentage: n would be updated with probability (n + 1)/101 instead of n/100. For example, a package with Phased-Update-Percentage: 0 could still be updated even though it shouldn’t, and a package with Phased-Update-Percentage: 1 would be installed almost twice as much as it should be. Correct the erroneous math. Note that libstdc++ implements std::uniform_int_distribution in such a way that for a given seed, changing dist(0, 100) to dist(0, 99) has the effect of decreasing each sample by 0 or 1; therefore, this patch will not randomly trigger extra phased updates that had previously been excluded. Fixes: c5bc86d45e003905ef411146e66b414d26fb1ff8 Signed-off-by: Anders Kaseorg

policy: Use smart pointers

2025-02-14T18:45:12Z

apt-pkg/policy.cc: prepare for APT::StringView -> std::string_view

2024-11-12T19:36:18Z

Implement 'Pin: source-version '

2024-08-22T14:11:38Z

As wondered about by Paride some minutes ago.

Modernize standard library includes

2024-02-20T12:49:04Z

This was automated with sed and git-clang-format, and then I had to fix up the top of policy.cc by hand as git-clang-format accidentally indented it by two spaces.

Allow apt to run if no dpkg/status file exists

2022-09-02T14:55:45Z

Not having a dpkg/status file used to be a hard error which from a boostrap perspective is suspect as in the beginning, there is no status so you would need to touch it into existence. We make a difference between factual non-existence and inaccessibility to catch mistakes in which the file is not readable for some reason, the testcase test-bug-254770-segfault-if-cache-not-buildable is an example of this. Note that apt has already figured out at this point that this is a Debian-like system which should have a dpkg/status file. This change does not effect the auto-detection and is not supposed to.

policy: Do not override negative pins with 1 due to phasing

2022-06-28T12:54:42Z

If a package is already pinned to a negative value, we should not override this with a positive 1. This causes packages to be installable that were pinned to -1, which is not intended. For this, implement phasing as a ceiling of 1 for the pin instead of a fixed 1 value. An alternative would have been to fix it to NEVER_PIN, but that would mean entirely NEW packages would not be installable while phasing which is not the intention either. LP: #1978125

(Temporarily) Rewrite phased updates using a keep-back approach

2022-06-28T12:25:18Z

This is a lot closer to the original implementation in update-manager, but still has a couple of differences that might cause bugs: - When checking whether a version is a security update, we only check versions in between and not any later version. This happens mostly because we do not know the suite, so we just check if there is any version between the installed version and our target that is a security update - We only keep already installed packages, as we run before the resolver. update-manager first runs the resolver, and then marks for keep all packages that were upgraded or newly installed that are phasing (afaict). This approach has a significant caveat that if you have version 1 installed from a release pocket, version 2 is in security, and version 3 is phasing in updates, that it installs version 3 rather than 2 from security as the policy based implementation does. It also means that apt install does not respect phasing and would always install version 3 in such a scenario. LP: #1979244

Use pkgTagSection::Key in more places in src:apt

2022-04-01T12:16:19Z

The speed critical paths were converted earlier, but the remaining could benefit a tiny bit from this as well especially as we have the facility now available and can therefore brush up the code in various places in the process as well. Also takes the time to add the hidden Exists method advertised in the headers, but previously not implemented.