Mix Together With Jibe Stable Together With Testing Releases Inwards Debian

My Debian organisation runs the electrical current stable Debian distribution Wheezy. However, at that topographic point are software packages that are alone available inward the electrical current testing distribution Jessie. Examples are dateutils, as well as Enlightenment 0.17. Too eager to await for Jessie to exceed away stable, as well as every bit good lazy to construct these packages from source, I used the apt-pinning technique to coerce APT, Debian's parcel manager, to install these packages on Wheezy.

Apt-pinning lets yous mix as well as tally the dissimilar distributions inward a Debian release: stable, testing, as well as unstable. The steps below explicate how to specify that all packages should last installed or updated from Wheezy (the stable version), amongst the exception of dateutils which nosotros 'pin' to Jessie (the testing version).

Disclaimer: Apt-pinning is considered an advanced topic inward Debian. Use at your ain risk.

1. Add testing to sources.list.

   The file /etc/apt/sources.list specifies the software releases yous desire as well as where to fetch them.

   Assuming that your sources.list file currently links to Wheezy only, it should resemble something similar the following, withal the actual mirror site.

    deb http://deb.vanvps.com/debian/ wheezy mind contrib non-free deb http://security.debian.org/   wheezy/updates mind  deb http://deb.vanvps.com/debian/ wheezy-updates mind 

   Append the next describe of piece of employment to the file:

    deb http://deb.vanvps.com/debian/ jessie mind contrib non-free 

2. Specify install priority preferences.
   • Create the file /etc/apt/preferences if it does non exist.

     This file specifies the priority preferences of which Debian version (e.g., testing vs stable) to install for packages.

   • Insert the next lines.

      Package: dateutils Pin: break n=jessie Pin-Priority: 750  Package: * Pin: break n=wheezy Pin-Priority: 700  Package: * Pin: break o=Debian Pin-Priority: -10 

     Any parcel that is non named dateutils, as well as is non business office of Wheezy is matched yesteryear the 3rd department amongst a priority of -10. H5N1 negative priority way that the parcel volition never last installed or upgraded. This entails that no parcel from Jessie other than dateutils volition always last installed or upgraded.

     When a newer version of dateutils becomes available inward Jessie, dateutils volition last updated. This is because the dateutils parcel is matched yesteryear the commencement section, which takes precedence over the 3rd section.

     It is highly recommended that yous read the man(5) page for apt_preferences to know to a greater extent than close setting preferences.

3. Update APT repository.

    $ sudo apt-get update 

4. Install dateutils.

   The next dominance installs dateutils from testing, as well as also attempts to fulfill its dependencies from testing.

    $ sudo apt-get -t testing install dateutils 

To upgrade your system, execute, every bit usual, sudo apt-get upgrade. dateutils is upgraded from Jessie spell all other packages are upgraded from Wheezy.

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