[Tfug] backporting packages with Woody

[Zardus]

I use backports.org for some things that Evolution (which I get from yet
another source) needs. It works pretty well. I set all the packages from
there to a 300 priority in /etc/apt/preferences to make it only fetch
the necessary deps for Evolution and keep it from upgrading all the
other packages that I'm just happy with. I could use Evolution 1.2 and
not go through this trouble, but that's not how I work.

http://www.argon.org/~roderick/apt-pinning.html has some good info on
the preferences file. My preferences file looks like this:

# Apt preferences file:

# Evolution:
Package: evolution
Pin: origin www-users.cs.umn.edu
Pin-Priority: 990

Package: *
Pin: origin www-users.cs.umn.edu
Pin-Priority: 390

# some Evolution deps
Package: *
Pin: origin www.backports.org
Pin-Priority: 300

Package: *
Pin: origin http.us.debian.org
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: origin security.debian.org
Pin-Priority: 710

# mplayer, DeCSS
Package: *
Pin: origin marillat.free.fr
Pin-Priority: 620
#end

Works pretty well. Probably less hassle just to run Sid, but oh well.
Anyways, sounds like this might be a decent solution for you. Just put
the specific packages from backports.org (or other sites. apt-get.org is
your friend) on a high priority and the rest on a low one.

- Yan

On Mon, 2003-11-24 at 13:18, Scott Denlinger wrote:
> My sense is that most people on this list who are using Debian are
> running either Sarge or Sid, but for those of you who run Woody, have
> you had any experience with the backported packages available from
> www.backports.org? Up until now when I've wanted the newest versions of
> packages I've just installed them from source in /usr/local, but the
> list of packages I've done this with is getting longer and longer, and
> it would be nice to get these more integrated into the Woody package
> database so apt-get and dselect plays more nicely with my system.
> 
> Since I recently discovered the backports web site, it seems like I now
> have two ways to do this: either try to figure out how to create .debs
> from source packages and install them using apt and keeping them in a
> local repository, or using the backports site in my sources.list file.
> 
> Have others had good experiences using the backported .debs from the
> backports site?
> 
> Is there a nice tutorial or site out there that shows one how to
> integrate software installed from source packages into the apt system? I've looked at the APT howto,
> and several other .deb creation sites, but that route represents a
> pretty steep learning curve for me at this point. For what it's worth,
> this would be a *great* topic for a Thursday night session in case some
> of the more advanced Debian users among us would like an opportunity to
> teach the newer users how to make APT more powerful
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Scott Denlinger
> scott at scottdenlinger.com
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