Re: Installation of packages from backports, unstable and stable.

[Freeman <evenso@worldwidehtml.com>]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 09:42:42AM +0530, vishnu vardhan wrote:
>    OS : Lenny 5.0.3
> 
>    I have installed openoffice from backports and transmission-gtk from
>    unstable.
> 
>    I have read a couple of articles about installing packages from stable,
>    unstable, etc.. and pinning of packages.
> 
>    My sources.list entries are as follows :
>    deb [1]http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free
>    deb [2]http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
>    #deb [3]http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib
>    non-free
>    #deb [4]http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian unstable main non-free contrib
> 
>    After I have installed transmission-gtk, I commented out the line of
>    unstable.
>    I did not created /etc/spt/preference file. I am still averse to pinning
>    of packages.
> 
>    Do I need to create a prefernce file ? and is it compulsory ?
>    Are there any more lines need to be added to sources.list file ?
>    If I did not create the preference file, and if I update the system [
>    apt-get update, apt-get upgrade ] will any issues crop up ?
>    If I pin my packages, what word should I use for backports. e.g. Pin:
>    release a=testing.
> 
>    Please guide me.
> 

I can not offer you guidance. I can tell you that did not use a preferences
file when I ran stable, etch, with backports installed.

I did use aptitude for my package manager. It is supposed to have better
dependency handling.  I think I also read somewhere about aptitude
respecting user selections.  

I made sure to set it not to make changes automatically.  But it never asked
to uninstall a backports package.  (In the ncurses TUI under preferences.)

There were quite a few backports packages on my system. If memory serves
well, Open Office packages were among them.

You can always wait to make a preferences file if aptitude asks to remove a
backport package.

If you do use pinning, I recommend only pinning the backport packages and
all their dependencies to the backports archive. I recommend against
attempting to design an overarching pinning policy for all your package
management. The latter seems popular with some but unwise.

-- 
Kind Regards,
Freeman