Re: What is the preferred way to install packages from testing/unstable in stable?

[Alexandru Cardaniuc <cardaniuc@gmail.com>]

Aniruddha <mailingdotlist@gmail.com> writes:

> I would like to install the latest version swfdec-mozilla (because it
> offers autoplay). I intent to track stable as closely as possible. As
> far I can tell there are four possibilities to achieve this:
>
> 1) Temporary enable testing/unstable repositories and install the
> program 2) Download *.deb from packages.debian org 3) Use apt-pinning
> 4) Compile from source, this requires option 1 to be enabled.
> Otherwise you get the following error:
>
> # apt-get build-dep swfdec-mozilla E: Build-Depends dependency for
> swfdec-mozilla cannot be satisfied because the package
> libswfdec-0.8-dev cannot be found
>
>
> I am interested to learn the best method to install a newer package
> while remaining as close (compatible) with stable as possible. Thanks
> in advance!


How about asking the developer(s) to upload swfdec-mozilla to
debian-volatile? Flash stuff changes pretty often and hence the plugin
becomes useless at some point during the life of the stable. Like the
last time they changed something on youtube and swfdec couldn't play it
anymore, until the new version came out (which by the way wasn't
uploaded to stable). I think updates that break package functionality is
something that qualifies for inclusion in debian-volatile. At least that
is how I understand why, for instance, pidgin is in debian-volatile. I
fail to see the difference between pidgin and swfdec-mozilla in this
case. 

So, I think the best solution is to ask developers to upload
swfdec-mozilla to debian-volatile and to support it there too.

What do you guys think?


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