External Dependency Solver Protocol".
+## Terminology
+
+In the following we use the term **architecture qualified package name**
+(or *arch-qualified package names* for short) to refer to package
+identifiers of the form "package:arch" where "package" is a package name
+and "arch" a dpkg architecture.
+
+
## Components
- **APT**: we know this one.
- **Dir::Bin::Solvers**: absolute path of the directory where to look for
external solvers. Defaults to `/usr/lib/apt/solvers`.
+
## Protocol
When configured to use an external solver, APT will resort to it to
The following **action fields** are supported in request stanzas:
- **Install:** (optional, defaults to the empty string) A space
- separated list of package names, with *no version attached*, to
- install. This field denotes a list of packages that the user wants to
- install, usually via an APT `install` request.
+ separated list of arch-qualified package names, with *no version
+ attached*, to install. This field denotes a list of packages that the
+ user wants to install, usually via an APT `install` request.
- **Remove:** (optional, defaults to the empty string) Same syntax of
Install. This field denotes a list of packages that the user wants to
- **APT-Candidate:** (optional, defaults to `no`). Allowed values:
`yes`, `no`. When set to `yes`, the corresponding package is the APT
candidate for installation among all available packages with the same
- name.
+ name and architecture.
- **APT-Automatic:** (optional, defaults to `no`). Allowed values:
`yes`, `no`. When set to `yes`, the corresponding package is marked by
should be removed by the solver only when the Autoremove action is
requested (see Request section).
+- **APT-Release:** (optional) The releases the package belongs to, according to
+ APT. The format of this field is multiline with one value per line and the
+ first line (the one containing the field name) empty. Each subsequent line
+ corresponds to one of the releases the package belongs to and looks like
+ this: `o=Debian,a=unstable,n=sid,l=Debian,c=main`. That is, each release line
+ is a comma-separated list of "key=value" pairs, each of which denotes a
+ Release file entry (Origin, Label, Codename, etc.) in the format of
+ APT_PREFERENCES(5).
+
+
### Answer
An answer from the external solver to APT is either a *solution* or an
The following invariant on **exit codes** must hold true. When the
external solver is *able to find a solution*, it will write the solution
to standard output and then exit with an exit code of 0. When the
-external solver is *unable to find a solution* (and s aware of that), it
-will write an error to standard output and then exit with an exit code
-of 0. An exit code other than 0 will be interpreted as a solver crash
-with no meaningful error about dependency resolution to convey to the
-user.
+external solver is *unable to find a solution* (and is aware of that),
+it will write an error to standard output and then exit with an exit
+code of 0. An exit code other than 0 will be interpreted as a solver
+crash with no meaningful error about dependency resolution to convey to
+the user.
#### Solution