&apt-email;
&apt-product;
<!-- The last update date -->
- <date>18 September 2009</date>
+ <date>16 January 2010</date>
</refentryinfo>
<refmeta>
</refnamediv>
<refsect1><title>Description</title>
- <para><filename>apt.conf</filename> is the main configuration file for the APT suite of
- tools, all tools make use of the configuration file and a common command line
- parser to provide a uniform environment. When an APT tool starts up it will
- read the configuration specified by the <envar>APT_CONFIG</envar> environment
- variable (if any) and then read the files in <literal>Dir::Etc::Parts</literal>
- then read the main configuration file specified by
- <literal>Dir::Etc::main</literal> then finally apply the
- command line options to override the configuration directives, possibly
- loading even more config files.</para>
-
+ <para><filename>apt.conf</filename> is the main configuration file for
+ the APT suite of tools, but by far not the only place changes to options
+ can be made. All tools therefore share the configuration files and also
+ use a common command line parser to provide a uniform environment.</para>
+ <orderedlist>
+ <para>When an APT tool starts up it will read the configuration files
+ in the following order:</para>
+ <listitem><para>the file specified by the <envar>APT_CONFIG</envar>
+ environment variable (if any)</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>all files in <literal>Dir::Etc::Parts</literal> in
+ alphanumeric ascending order which have no or "<literal>conf</literal>"
+ as filename extension and which only contain alphanumeric,
+ hyphen (-), underscore (_) and period (.) characters -
+ otherwise they will be silently ignored.</para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>the main configuration file specified by
+ <literal>Dir::Etc::main</literal></para></listitem>
+ <listitem><para>the command line options are applied to override the
+ configuration directives or to load even more configuration files.</para></listitem>
+ </orderedlist>
+ </refsect1>
+ <refsect1><title>Syntax</title>
<para>The configuration file is organized in a tree with options organized into
functional groups. Option specification is given with a double colon
notation, for instance <literal>APT::Get::Assume-Yes</literal> is an option within
<varlistentry><term>PDiffs</term>
<listitem><para>Try to download deltas called <literal>PDiffs</literal> for
Packages or Sources files instead of downloading whole ones. True
- by default.</para></listitem>
+ by default.</para>
+ <para>Two sub-options to limit the use of PDiffs are also available:
+ With <literal>FileLimit</literal> can be specified how many PDiff files
+ are downloaded at most to patch a file. <literal>SizeLimit</literal>
+ on the other hand is the maximum precentage of the size of all patches
+ compared to the size of the targeted file. If one of these limits is
+ exceeded the complete file is downloaded instead of the patches.
+ </para></listitem>
</varlistentry>
<varlistentry><term>Queue-Mode</term>
files for every Language - especially the long Languagecodes are rare, so please
inform you which ones are available before you set here impossible values.</para>
<para>The default list includes "environment" and "en". "<literal>environment</literal>" has a special meaning here:
- It will be replaced at runtime with the languagecodes extracted from the <literal>LC_MESSAGES</literal> enviroment variable.
+ It will be replaced at runtime with the languagecodes extracted from the <literal>LC_MESSAGES</literal> environment variable.
It will also ensure that these codes are not included twice in the list. If <literal>LC_MESSAGES</literal>
is set to "C" only the <filename>Translation-en</filename> file (if available) will be used.
To force apt to use no Translation file use the setting <literal>Acquire::Languages=none</literal>. "<literal>none</literal>"