On Wed, Jan 27, 2010 at 8:15 PM, Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.
Not "fool". Apt, by default, treats all remote repositories in one of two
manners "get every package from there" (priority 500) or "get only the
packages I request from there" (priority 1 -- backports and experimental).
Using pinning, you can communicate to apt your actual preferences of
repositories. In my case, try to get all packages from
stable+security+volatile, but if you need them to satisfy dependencies or I
request a specific version you can pull from backports,
testing+volatile+security, unstable, and experimental in that order.
>These do not solve the package version
>dependency issue. If it happen to be running, you are just lucky.
Apt/aptitude will try as much as possible to make sure the various
dependencies of all installed packages are satisfied. If they fail, you could
be in trouble. If they succeed but something still breaks, you are unlucky
(please file a bug).
Preferences don't solve package dependency issues in isolation, but aptitude
can use the priorities when ranking it's solutions and deciding which packages
to upgrade. Once you start pulling in packages from
testing/unstable/experimental, you will have to execute a full-upgrade more
often, and provide a bit a manual guidance to aptitude, but that's to be
expected.
>If you can locally backport package, you should try it to be safe.
I don't like doing this because I don't like having to provide my own security
support.
>If
>not, it is best not to do this kind of mixed system to avoid problem.
Having run a mixed desktop and 2 mixed servers since before Lenny was
released, I disagree with this statement. It allows the packages whose
development I'm not currently following is remain dependable (pulled from
stable or at least testing) while letting me pull packages with new, shiny
features that I must try from unstable or experimental.
I really do find it to be a best-of-both-worlds situation. My configuration
is documented at http://iguanasuicide.net/node/4.
--
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr. ,= ,-_-. =.
bss@iguanasuicide.net ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy `-'(. .)`-'
http://iguanasuicide.net/ \_/