Re: emacs21-bin-common package broken

[Florian Kulzer <florian@molphys.leidenuniv.nl>]

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 17:49:57 -0700, kruton wrote:
> > OK, I'll ask a stupid question.  How do you setup
> > the sources.list file
> > so you can use unstable, but install emacs from
> > testing at the same
> > time?
> 
> i don't think even testing is working... both testing
> and unstable have the same version number.. so wait
> till the bug is fixed. (or use xemacs as suggested)

The problem is not the emacs21 package but rather its dependency, the
emacs21-common package:

$ apt-cache policy emacs21-common
emacs21-common:
  Installed: 21.4a-3
  Candidate: 21.4a-3.1
  Version table:
     21.4a-3.1 0
        500 http://ftp.nl.debian.org unstable/main Packages
 *** 21.4a-3 0
        500 http://ftp.nl.debian.org testing/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     21.4a-1 0
        500 http://ftp.nl.debian.org stable/main Packages

To answer the question of the parent: You can just add two lines for
testing to your /etc/apt/sources.list, for example

deb http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ testing main non-free contrib

(You don't have to use the Dutch mirror, of course.)

Apt(itude) will still install the unstable packages by default, because
the newer versions of a package always get a higher priority, unless you
specify otherwise in /etc/apt/preferences. ("man apt_preferences")

Then you can tell apt that you want the testing version of emcas21:

apt-get install emacs21=21.4a-3 emacs21-common=21.4a-3 emacs21-bin-common=21.4a-3

After that you just have to avoid attempts to upgrade emacs21-common
until the problem is fixed. (Aptitude seems to be smart enough to notice
the problem and keep the package at the testing version.)

-- 
Regards,
          Florian