mixed version packages

[Sam Vilain]

On Tue, 18 Nov 2003 23:31, Henning Glawe wrote;

  > The only way to make this work cleanly is a "backport" (you can
  > find a list of existing backports on www.apt-get.org).

  > making a backport yourself is a non-trivial task in most cases and
  > you should at least have basic experience in building debian
  > packages.

Or you can just add `unstable' sources to your /etc/apt/sources.list
and:

  apt-get source foo
  cd foo-1.23
  dpkg-buildpackage -b -uc -rfakeroot

99% of packages will just compile from unstable like this without
problems, though sometimes lazy maintainers put incorrect version
dependancies in the debian/control files.  Adding a `Requires:'
relationship for the version of the package in testing rather than the
version that the application actually specifies in its README seems to
be a favourite practice.  In that case, you can just edit
debian/control to remove the version part of the dependancy.

It's also possible to add the testing apt paths to your
/etc/apt/sources.list, but `pin' the testing versions at a lower
priority, so that `stable' packages are preferred over `testing'.
See apt_preferences(5) for details.

eg, adding the following to /etc/apt/preferences would allow grabbing
of packages from `testing' as required:

Package: *
Pin: a=testing
Pin-Priority: 50

-- 
Sam Vilain, sam at vilain.net

  If we make peaceful revolution impossible, we make violent
revolution inevitiable.
JOHN F KENNEDY