Re: apt frustration

[Brian Servis <servis@purdue.edu>]

*- On 31 Jul, formasic@coates.formasic.com wrote about "apt frustration"
> Folks,
> 
> I run a little home office network.  Most of it is stable, slink at
> the moment, but I like to keep some stuff really leading edge (Java,
> DocBook/Jade, egcs &c).
> 
> A simple way to do this would SEEM to be to use apt/deity.
> 
> It'd be great to be able to say: keep everything stable according to
> my CDs and the ftp site, but keep the following packages (and anything
> they depend on) up-to-date according to the unstable FTP site.
> apt/deity doesn't seem to be able to do this.
> 
> A simple alternative would be to have a local directory that contains
> just the .deb files I'd like to be unstable, and to include this in
> '/etc/apt/sources.list'.  That doesn't work either!  I have to add a
> bunch of support files (the 'Packages' file, and now some other file).
> 
> It seems that there isn't a simple way to fulfill my simple, common
> need.  Can someone make a suggestion?
> 

Probably the best way is to use the 'hold' feature of dselect.  Get
your system set up as you want with stable then use dselect to put the
packages you want to keep the same on 'hold' with the '=' key.  Then
modify your /etc/apt/sources.list to include the unstable branch.  Then
only update packages using dselect select method.  I'm not sure what
happens if a package you want to upgrade depends on a later version of
a package you have on hold. 

-- 
Brian 
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Mechanical Engineering                              servis@purdue.edu
Purdue University                   http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/~servis
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