Access to unstable debian packages

[Emilien du Roy]

I want to have access to some unstable debian packages (not an automatic update but only a hand made selection of the relevant packages ! !) in my LMDE distribution. What line should I add in my official-package-repositories.list file which today is :

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com debian main upstream import romeo

deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/ testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free

deb http://extra.linuxmint.com debian main

[py-thon]

Depending on what you want you should add the first or all of the following lines:

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deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org sid main non-free

Another possibility would be to add a text file containing those lines to /etc/apt/sources.list.d which you could call sid.list (for example). After getting the desired packages you would then delete sid.list or comment each line with # at the beginning.

For detailed information see http://manpages.debian.org/man/5/sources.list

[Emilien du Roy]

Thank you.

I will use a second text file as you suggest with the additional line : deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free.

So apparently there is no way to forbid an update of all installed packages with potential new ones proposed by debian/sid ?

[py-thon]

So apparently there is no way to forbid an update of all installed packages with potential new ones proposed by debian/sid ?

Of course there is. Sorry, your thread sounded as if you already knew and only wanted to know the line for the repository.

That's a complex thing. There are different possibilities/best ways depending on what you want to do:
1. Get sid's version of already installed package(s) and only that
2. Get sid's version of already installed package(s) including all necessary dependencies
3. Install package(s) from sid that as yet are not on your system and only that
4. Install package(s) from sid that as yet are not on your system including all necessary dependencies

[Emilien du Roy]

Thanks,

I think that alternatives 3 & 4 are relevant to my situation.

[py-thon]

For safety reasons I would first add unstable to pinning-preferences.
There should be a file called /etc/apt/preferences or /etc/apt/preferences.d/preferences . Add the following lines to this file

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Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 300

The priority (300 in my example) should be lower than any other already existing in this file. This will give sid the lowest priority from all repositories. Some additional information about pinning: https://wiki.debian.org/AptPreferences and http://www.argon.org/~roderick/apt-pinning.html

Then you can install packages with the following commmands:

1. This will install the package called foo from sid and install all dependencies and recommendations from your usual repositories.

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apt-get install foo/unstable

2. This will install the package called foo and all necessary dependencies plus recommended packages from sid

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apt-get -t unstable install foo

I would tend to version 2, so as to make sure that the dependencies' versions fit foo.
If you don't want recommendations installed you can add --no-install-recommends to the lines.
Before you run anything for real I would advise you to run it once with option -s as a simulation to see what the command will do (this won't change your system, but you'll see possible problems in advance). So the command might read

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apt-get -s --no-install-recommends -t unstable install foo

Some additional information: http://manpages.debian.org/cgi-bin/man. ... ry=apt-get and http://www.binarytides.com/enable-testing-repo-debian/

You can stay with sid activated because pinning keeps sid's packages from being preferred by the package management.
But I prefer to comment sid (put # at the beginning of the respective lines in sources list) or delete sid.list because without sid the package lists update quicker and everything seems easier to me.

[kurotsugi]

as a final addition, I'd suggest to run a simulation using 'aptitude -s -t sid install <package name>' to ensure that your system won't break if you install that package. don't forget to backup your system since the gap between LMDE and sid is very wide and you can't predict everything :3

[Emilien du Roy]

Thank you very much to Python and kurotsugi. I will apply these wise advices.