to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > On Mon, May 27, 2024 at 02:02:47PM -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote: > > ISTR that "apt-get install <package>=<version>" will unconditionally > install <version> of <package>, if necessary pulling in dependencies. > > But I've never tried it :-)
That pulls in dependencies but does not install packages that would otherwise be forbidden by the priority system. E.g.: if you have foobar 1.5 in stable and foobar 2.1 in backports, and they each depend on libfoobar of the same version number, then apt-get install foobar=2.1 will fail saying that it requires libfoobar 2.1 but version 1.5 is to be installed. You can then solve that by saying apt-get install foobar=2.1 libfoobar=2.1 but many interesting packages will have a web of dependencies, and sometimes following them will get you to a place it is hard to escape. The backports repository is generally safe (or safe-ish) because the packages in it are meant to work in a mostly-stable system. Other repos are less accomodating. -dsr-
