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Hi All, I have debian stable (etch). Sometimes I want to install the newest versions of some packages from testing/unstable. Typically I can only install some package with the newer version of the shared libraries it depends on. For example dash (0.5.3-7) from etch depends on libc6 (>= 2.3.5-1) while dash (0.5.4-12) from lenny depends on libc6 (>= 2.7-1) and debian stable has libc6 (2.3.6.ds1-13etch7) . Will my system be broken after upgrading libc6* along with locales, tzdata and binutils from testing(lenny) repository ? If not then it means that other programs ( for example bash ) are able to work with libc6 (2.7-*) instead of libc6 (2.3.[56]*). On other hand I don't think that dash (0.5.4-12) from lenny requires something that is absent in libc6 (2.3.[56]*). Why in that case dash and most/all of the program packages from testing require the newer libraries from testing instead of stable ? Typically I want to upgrade just some package like gcompris from testing. What options do I have ? 1) Upgrade the package along with a huge set of libraries it depends on. But I don't want to make all my system testing/unstable. 2) I can get the source of the newest gcompris, lib*-dev packages, compile it and remove the source and lib*-dev. But it takes a lot of time. Moreover I can do it but my wife can't and she doesn't understand why it takes that much time to just install a newer version of some program. 3) Wait for a couple of years for the next stable release of debian. It's too long. I read http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Program-Library-HOWTO/shared-libraries.html, http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-sharedlibs.html and some other articles however I don't understand: Why packages in testing/unstable require the newer shared libraries ? Thanks, Boris |