are development and staging branches of wines no longer downloadable?

[fargodwe]

I have been fighting everytime I install a new version of linux mint or reinstall it, with a program called GedStar Pro. I won't get into the details as they are all over in posts from me if you search for them. Suffice to say this: every time I have to reinstall linux mint resulting in me also having to reinstall wine and GedStar Pro, I have ALWAYS had to use the staging branch to avoid the program not being able to open a jet database. I have followed the same steps every time, thanks to Bob Wya working this out for me initially. Using the stable or development branches do not solve the problem.

So, I had a problem with the microSD card I am running linux Mint from (on a Chromebook) and needed to recreate the installation. When I went to winehq the development and staging branches seem to no longer download:

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dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging
[sudo] password for dave:         
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package winehq-staging is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'winehq-staging' has no installation candidate
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ 

I have tried this using each of the instructions for the separate versions of Ubuntu/Mint with the same result.

So - am I missing something in doing the download (I do follow each of the instructions - 3 steps, 4 if you include adding the 32-bit architecture)?

I've given up on asking for help on getting GedStar itself working as one such quest just led to "everyone" questioning my nomenclature but missing the entire point. So - right now I need to know how to install the staging branch.

[spoon0042]

You can do a 'apt policy winehq-staging' to see what apt knows about that package. If you've set things up successfully there should be a long list of available versions and we can go from there.

[fargodwe]

Thank you so much for the reply. Here is the output showing trying the get again and the output from your request immediately following it.

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dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ 
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package winehq-staging is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'winehq-staging' has no installation candidate
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ apt policy winehq-staging
winehq-staging:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate: (none)
  Version table:
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ 

[spoon0042]

Yeah, apt isn't seeing any package with that name. Did you remember to 'apt update' after adding the repository (and double check you did that as well)? dl.winehq.org should show up somewhere if you do a

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grep -r ^deb /etc/apt/sources.list*

[fargodwe]

Removed everything and followed the instructions again including the 'apt update'.

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dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 
[sudo] password for dave:         
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ wget -O - https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key | sudo apt-key add -
--2020-06-16 23:23:47--  https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/winehq.key
Resolving dl.winehq.org (dl.winehq.org)... 151.101.130.217, 151.101.66.217, 151.101.2.217, ...
Connecting to dl.winehq.org (dl.winehq.org)|151.101.130.217|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 3220 (3.1K) [application/pgp-keys]
Saving to: ‘STDOUT’

-                   100%[===================>]   3.14K  --.-KB/s    in 0s      

2020-06-16 23:23:47 (30.3 MB/s) - written to stdout [3220/3220]

OK
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ sudo add-apt-repository 'deb https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu/ bionic main' 
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ sudo apt update
Ign:1 http://packages.linuxmint.com tara InRelease
Hit:2 http://packages.linuxmint.com tara Release                               
Hit:3 https://dl.winehq.org/wine-builds/ubuntu bionic InRelease                
Get:4 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-security InRelease [88.7 kB]    
Hit:5 http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu bionic InRelease                     
Hit:7 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic InRelease                        
Get:8 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates InRelease [88.7 kB]      
Get:9 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports InRelease [74.6 kB]
Fetched 252 kB in 1s (203 kB/s)    
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
All packages are up to date.
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ sudo apt install --install-recommends winehq-staging
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 winehq-staging : Depends: wine-staging (= 5.10~bionic)
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
dave@dave-Aleena ~ $ 

Note the hint I *think* it is trying to give:

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Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 winehq-staging : Depends: wine-staging (= 5.10~bionic)
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

So, I tried to install wine-staging, which brought up more broken packages, tried installing those - same thing again plus it some some are not installable.

Do I have to completely reinstall Mint or something?

[fargodwe]

Ok, it took me some digging since I'm so dang stupid - found the problem. I installed Mint 18.3. After the upgrades I did an dist-upgrade. I *thought* that took me to Mint 19.3. Turns out no - it upgraded to 18.4!! So, I removed everything wine - keys, repository, etc., then started over again this time following the instructions that show Mint 18.x. Everything works fine now. I feel stupid.