[Gllug] Getting Debian to take packages selectively out of Sid

[Paul Cupis]

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On Saturday 25 Jan 2003 12:22, John Winters wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm trying to master apt's sources.list file.  I want to be able to pick
> packages selectively out of unstable or testing but not have apt upgrade
> my whole system to unstable/testing.  (Specifically, I want to install
> the Debian packages of OpenOffice.org which appear to be in
> Sid/contrib.)

You should use the backported Woody debs for openoffice.org on Debian. See 
http://www.linux-debian.de/openoffice

> Now, is there any way of convincing apt that it should fetch packages
> from there *only* if specically asked for them.

Yes, using apt-pinning, this is possible. See apt_preferences(5).

Example: create file /etc/apt/preferences containing

Package: *
Pin: release stable
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release unstable
Pin-Priority: 50

with such a file, your machine will be running stable (Woody), but you will be 
able to pick packages from unstable using apt-get install foo -t unstable. 
Only dependancies will be brought in from unstable, so it will not be a full 
upgrade to sid.

Also, using apt-show-versions, you can keep an eye on when these packages are 
updated in sid.

HOWEVER, I would not currently recommend doing this for openoffice.org, nor in 
general to install sid packages on Woody. It is good for people running a 
mixed tesitng/unstable system, but there will be problems with a mixed 
woody/unstable system, such as packages requiring sid's glibc, perl, et 
cetera. You might be better off looking into apt-build or apt-src or whatever 
to backport the packages to Woody. This recent thread, starting at 
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2003/debian-devel-200301/msg01644.html 
may be of interest.

In this case, however, I would just use the backported Woody packages provided 
by the debian-openoffice team.

Regards,

Paul Cupis
- -- 
paul at cupis.co.uk

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