On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 11:54:51AM -0600, Mark A. Bialik wrote: > Colin Watson wrote: > > > This may sound callous, but those "some people" - or at least those > > people who *can* fix it, perhaps not trivially easily - are the only > > people who should be using unstable. > > ... and there are some people who run unstable because certain packages > and/or versions of packages they need are only in unstable. > > The alternative would be to run a different distribution or compile from > source, and we wouldn't want that, would we? :)
I know you were being (somewhat) sarcastic, but the fact is that you don't have to make a black and white choice between testing and unstable. IOW, just because you need package foo from unstable doesn't mean you really want _all_ of unstable. Here's how: Edit the file /etc/apt/preferences, and make it look something like the following: Package: * Pin: release a=testing Pin-Priority: 900 Package: * Pin: release a=unstable Pin-Priority: 110 Obviously you need both testing and unstable in your sources.list, e.g. deb http://mirrors.midco.net/debian testing main non-free contrib deb-src http://mirrors.midco.net/debian testing main non-free contrib deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free deb http://mirrors.midco.net/debian unstable main non-free contrib deb-src http://mirrors.midco.net/debian unstable main non-free contrib deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free deb-src http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free Obviosly you can use any mirror you like. At this point, "apt-get install foo" will install foo from _testing_. If you want the unstable version, "apt-get -t unstable install foo" will install foo from unstable; further installs or upgrades of foo will continue to track unstable. Finally, you can install any available version (use "apt-cache showpkg foo" to see which versions are available) using this syntax: apt-get install foo=version where version is the preferred version. I hope this helps someone who is experiencing angst over unstable. -- Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@;incanus.net I must despise the world which does not know that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. -- Ludwig van Beethoven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
