instaling kde3 on woody

[Tzafrir Cohen <tzafrir@technion.ac.il>]

Hi

I tried installing KDE3 on woody in a "proper" and hopefully reporoducable
way. Here goes:

1. Add the KDE3/woody source to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://people.debian.org/~schoepf/kde3/woody ./

2. Add an unstable (sid) source to sources.list. Only a source for main is
   needed for the purpose of installing KDE.

# This should be enough:
deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main
# in case you need some other things..
#deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
# And the same goes for non-US, and deb-src sources of the same things, if
# you want

3. create /etc/apt/preferences . Actually I had to work around some
   limitations, and therefore I got some non-optimal settings (more
   details in the notes)., Here is my /etc/apt/preferences:

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 490

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 480


As you can see, I've given woody (stable) packages priority that is
slightly *lower* than the default (500), and sid (unstable). This is
intended to give the kde3 source a priority that is higher than stable.
The downside is that any additional unofficil sources may suddenly get a
priority that is higher than default as well.

Some gotchas: any syntax errors there will be silently ignored. If you
make changes, have a look at the list of packages to be installed in the
next stage and make sure you did things right.

Back to the instructions:

4. apt-get update
   apt-get install -t unstable qt3-mt
   apt-get install kdebase kdeutils kdepim kdegames koffice kdetoys

[can anybody correct the last line?]


Notes:

1. the unofficial KDE3 sources don't seem to come with a Release file.
IMHO they should include such a file with 'Archive: [un]stable' and
'Origin: kde3' (or whatever, but not Debian, and the same to all
archives). This will make pinning much easier: I could simply give the
origin "kde3" a higher priority.

2. placing qt3 in the woody source would have been much help. Maybe add it
as a different "component" (like 'main' and 'contrib' in the standard
debian archives)



And in the end of this post, I wish to thank the people who had helped
building those packages, , create sources, and answer questions (including
my personal nags) on #debian-kde .

  Thanks folks

-- 
Tzafrir Cohen
mailto:tzafrir@technion.ac.il
http://www.technion.ac.il/~tzafrir