Re: What's the best package manager for single-package upgrades?

[Joe Rhett <jrhett@isite.net>]

> Joe wrote:
> > So I am writing here in hopes I'm overlooking
> > something.  Please, tell me
> > how one can update just one package and its
> > dependancies, without doing a
> > full-on conversion from Woody to unstable?  If a
> > single package forces one
> > to upgrade completely to unstable branch, then the
> > entire purpose of the
> > trees appears to be a moot point.

Simon offered:
> If you want to upgrade just Mozilla in Woody rather
> than the whole host of things that Sid suggests you're
> going need to look at backports, take a look at
> www.apt-get.org but beware that using a range of
> backported products together can seriously mess your
> system up...
 
That's good to know.

> If you think you might want to upgrade other packages
> in the future - and why not, Woody is *old* and most
> people happily run Sid on their desktops - you should
> look at dist-upgrading to Sid
 
Is that the process I was seeing before?  

1. Set the unstable archives to a higher preference in /etc/apt/preferences
2. "apt-get upgrade" to update the entire lot?
	... or am I missing a step?

I find it kindof sad that testing really doesn't appear to have any
function any longer.  One would like to run from testing and leave unstable
for the well, unstable stuff.  But I haven't really found much in testing,
which means one must be stale, or bleed on the edge.  Sux.

In a perfect world, people would hammer things and then roll them into
testing once they had been in unstable long enough without bug reports.
This would allow us to keep high-uptime systems running the same kernels
and such as our test/burn/destroy/rebuild laptops ;-) 

-- 
Joe Rhett                                                      Chief Geek
JRhett@Isite.Net                                      Isite Services, Inc.