Re: A Debian suggestion

[Camm Maguire <camm@maguirefamily.org>]

Greetings, and thank you so much for your useful feedback!  Even more,
may I commend you on your gentility, a quality nearly extinct in our era
but most appreciated by geezers like me who remember it.

What you seek already exists.  May I direct you to the man page of
apt-preferences likely installed on your system.

The short version is to

1) edit /etc/apt/sources.list as root (see below)
2) edit or create /etc/apt/preferences file  as root (see belos)
3) sudo apt-get update
4) sudo apt-get -t unstable install .....

/etc/apt/sources.list should include the line:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ unstable main non-free contrib non-free-firmware

/etc/apt/preferences should be something like

=============================================================================
Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 900

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 10
=============================================================================

You can add the flag --dry-run to the apt commands to see what they
would do before actually executing, which I recommend.

Please note that this will also bring in the minimum number of libraries
from unstable to run your requested program, which may affect the
behavior of other programs using those same libraries.

If you want to run a package from unstable without touching your
currently installed stable system at all, which to me is cleaner, I
highly recommend the very simple debootstrap/schroot installation I
recommended earlier.  This is literally as simple as the 4 commands
outlined above, and will give you access to whatever bleeding edge
version you desire in a safe sandbox that will leave your surrounding
system untouched.  Please feel free to ask again for these steps if you
would like to choose this route.

Take care,

Robert Boyer <robertstephenboyer@gmail.com> writes:

> Dearest Wonderful Debian Developers,
>
> For all the great systems that Debian supports, here is a suggestion, probably idiotic.
>
> It might sometimes possibly be to the benefit of a user and developer for the user to 'move on', possibly only temporarily, beyond the 'stable' version of
> something.
>
> It might be good if I could, for example,
>
>   sudo apt-get install xacl2,
>   sudo atp-get install xgcl,
>   sudo apt-get install xsbcl, or
>   sudo apt-get install xemacs
>
> which command, without affecting my stable current whatever, would give me access to the latest and greatest and perhaps riskiest
> version of acl2, gcl, sbcl, or emacs.  From xwhatever I could then perhaps send developers more useful bug reports.  There seems to be as much as a two year
> delay in the movement of bug fixes to 'stable'.
>
> I realize that I am way, way over my head.  I am extremely grateful to Debian and its developers.  I do not
> understand how they do what they do.  They have made one of the worst nightmares of my life, software installation,
> go away.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.
>
> With Highest Regards,
>
> Bob
>

-- 
Camm Maguire			     		    camm@maguirefamily.org
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."  --  Baha'u'llah