Re: argh! aptitude/dselect/apt-get dieing????

[Nathan E Norman <nnorman@incanus.net>]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 11:54:51AM -0600, Mark A. Bialik wrote:
> Colin Watson wrote:
> 
> > This may sound callous, but those "some people" - or at least those
> > people who *can* fix it, perhaps not trivially easily - are the only
> > people who should be using unstable.
> 
> ... and there are some people who run unstable because certain packages
> and/or versions of packages they need are only in unstable.
> 
> The alternative would be to run a different distribution or compile from
> source, and we wouldn't want that, would we?  :)

I know you were being (somewhat) sarcastic, but the fact is that you
don't have to make a black and white choice between testing and
unstable.  IOW, just because you need package foo from unstable
doesn't mean you really want _all_ of unstable.

Here's how:

Edit the file /etc/apt/preferences, and make it look something like
the following:

  Package: *
  Pin: release a=testing
  Pin-Priority: 900

  Package: *
  Pin: release a=unstable
  Pin-Priority: 110

Obviously you need both testing and unstable in your sources.list,
e.g.

  deb http://mirrors.midco.net/debian testing main non-free contrib
  deb-src http://mirrors.midco.net/debian testing main non-free contrib
  deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free
  deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free

  deb http://mirrors.midco.net/debian unstable main non-free contrib
  deb-src http://mirrors.midco.net/debian unstable main non-free contrib
  deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free
  deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free

Obviosly you can use any mirror you like.

At this point, "apt-get install foo" will install foo from _testing_.
If you want the unstable version, "apt-get -t unstable install foo"
will install foo from unstable; further installs or upgrades of foo
will continue to track unstable.

Finally, you can install any available version (use "apt-cache showpkg
foo" to see which versions are available) using this syntax:

  apt-get install foo=version

where version is the preferred version.

I hope this helps someone who is experiencing angst over unstable.

-- 
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@incanus.net
  I must despise the world which does not know that music is a
  higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
          -- Ludwig van Beethoven