Aptitude -t option for install_packages?

[Jurrie Overgoor]

Hello everyone,

I am installing Debian Stable with FAI. Debian Stable comes with an old 
version of Iceweasel (=Firefox). I would like to install a newer 
version. These packages are available in the 'squeeze-backports' repository.

The 'normal' way of installing Iceweasel from squeeze-backports is 
'apt-get install -t squeeze-backports iceweasel' (notice the -t parameter).

Back to FAI: I added this repository to /etc/fai/apt/sources.list. Then 
I edited my package_config files to include:
iceweasel/squeeze-backports

Now, when I create a new mirror, I see install_packages trying to 
install Iceweasel from squeeze-backports. But the command fails, because 
of dependencies. The Iceweasel package depends on a lot of other 
packages; most of them are in squeeze-backports. Appending 
'/squeeze-backports' to iceweasel only tells aptitude to get that 
package from squeeze-backports, NOT its dependencies... As far as I can 
tell now, I should manually sort out the complete dependency structure, 
and add all those packages to my packag_config with '/squeeze-backports' 
appended. This is a lot of work...

Instead, I edited /usr/sbin/install_packages to include a custom command 
'aptitude-squeeze-backports'. It's the normal aptitude command, but with 
the -t parameter. This sorts out all dependencies, and tries to get them 
from squeeze-backports. It works ok.

Now for my question: am I doing this right? Isn't there a built-in way 
to get what I want? Hacking the FAI scripts should not be necessary, 
should it?
Can we add something to specify custom parameters to aptitude? Maybe 
include them in [], like:
PACKAGES aptitude[-t squeeze_backports]

With kind regards,

Jurrie

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