On Saturday 29 June 2002 10:36 pm, Mike Egglestone wrote: > Hi, > What would one do if they were running a "stable" box, and wanted > a package that was only offered in "testing" or "unstable"? > > Would you edit your sources.list to point to "testing"... > apt-get update > apt-get install packagename > edit sources.list back to "stable"... > apt-get update > > Is there a better way to achieve this? > > Thanks > Mike
Yes, it's called "pinning" (don't ask me why...). It allows you to keep one distribution selected as the default (i.e. stable), and one or more others that are usable if explictly requested. If you pull a package from the non-default distribution, all dependencies will also be pulled along with it. Do a google for "preferences" "apt" and "pinning" - it should give you all the required info. If you just want to know what you need to tweak, create a file called /etc/apt/preferences that contains the following: Package: * Pin: release a=stable Pin-Priority: 777 Package: * Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 333 Then: - set up your sources.list file to refer to all the distributions you're interested in - do an apt-get update Once this has all cooked, you'll be able to use apt-get in two ways: apt-get <foo> will pull the stable version of package <foo> apt-get -t testing <foo> will pull the testing version of package <foo> and all its dependencies Hope this helps - Derek -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]