From 8576438367416c87f38effe960d143d94ebac851 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2024 13:45:57 +0000
Subject: sources.list(5): Explicitly say what the precedence order is

The order of apt sources can matter, but this man page did not
previously define whether /etc/apt/sources.list was parsed before or
after the fragment files in sources.list.d. Giving a concrete example
also provides a hint that numeric prefixes are a useful way to force a
particular sort order, and clarifies that the .list or .sources extension
is less important than lexicographic order.

Signed-off-by: Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>
---
 doc/sources.list.5.xml | 14 ++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+)

(limited to 'doc')

diff --git a/doc/sources.list.5.xml b/doc/sources.list.5.xml
index 63bede827..c55cdbd1c 100644
--- a/doc/sources.list.5.xml
+++ b/doc/sources.list.5.xml
@@ -41,6 +41,20 @@
       configured sources is acquired by <command>apt-get update</command> (or
       by an equivalent command from another APT front-end).
    </para>
+   <para>
+      If multiple source lists are used,
+      the most-preferred sources are those listed in
+      <filename>/etc/apt/sources.list</filename>,
+      followed by each file in
+      <filename>/etc/apt/sources.list.d/</filename>
+      in lexicographic order:
+      for example,
+      <filename>00-high-preference.list</filename>
+      is more-preferred than
+      <filename>50-middle-preference.sources</filename>
+      which is more-preferred than
+      <filename>z-low-preference.list</filename>.
+   </para>
  </refsect1>
  
  <refsect1><title>sources.list.d</title>
-- 
cgit v1.2.3-70-g09d2