Installer pulls packages from other releases in the pool

[Phillip Susi]

Frequently people reuse a USB stick to install another release, and the install fails because apt tries to pull packages from the wrong release. Apt should only be looking in the pool for the current release rather than everything it can find.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

I don't understand the problem, sorry. Can you expand on that? I don't use anything other than http(s) repositories. How are the USB sticks used?

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

To install the system in the first place of course.

Normally the installer iso contains a /pool directory with a single release directory, but if someone later uses the usb creator to extract another iso for another release, they end up with a /pool directory with two different release directories under it, and apt searches both releases for packages to install causing all sorts of problems.

[Julian Andres Klode (juliank)]

I might accept patches for it, but I'm not likely to work on it myself. It sounds fairly complicated to handle, especially if users actually want to use a different release.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

I'm not sure there is any legitimate case for booting $RELEASE1 and trying to have the installer install $RELEASE2. And even if there were, you can't do that now anyhow. It should be as simple as having apt-cdrom check lsb_release, and only look in that pool directory instead of searching them all.