ubuntu ppa's and apt precedence

Question

I'm trying to get the latest mplayer installed with vdpau support. Haven't had any luck so far.

I found a PPA that says it works and I want to install it. I added the PPA to my apt.sources and did an update.

I just wanted to know, how do I know that I'm now installing the mplayer package from the PPA, and not Ubuntu's standard repositories? From what I see I just install the same package using apt-get install mplayer.

How do I know which mplayer I'm getting? Where do I specify what takes precedence?

Answer 1

apt-cache policy mplayer

Look at the Candidate line, and then find that version in the below list.

Answer 2

apt-cache show mplayer will show some info on the package, including version (but not repo).

When you install a package, if there are multiple candidates, the one with the highest version number is installed by default. You can 'pin' a package to a certain version (or maybe a certain repo?), but I don't know how. Google it.

Finally, apt-cache policy mplayer is a good way to see the different candidates, as noted above.