Apt-Pinning

An excerpt from Apt-Pinning for Beginners

Why apt-pinning?

Do you run Debian? Have you ever gotten annoyed at how Debian Stable always seems to be out of date?

I will show you a way that you can have apt mix-and-match between Stable, Testing, and Unstable sources. This will allow you to run a mostly-Stable system, but also track the latest and greatest of those packages that you are most keenly interested in.

Why do this? Stable is covered by the Security Team. Testing and Unstable are not. For non-critical services, like perhaps your mailer, or your window manager, this is not so important, and the newest versions may have additional features that are desired. It is these packages that are perfect for pinning to a version, other than Stable. sources.list

The first step is to set up your /etc/apt/sources.list to include your typical Stable, plus the Testing/Unstable sources that you want.

A simple sources.list may look like this:

#Stable
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian stable main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US stable/non-US main contrib non-free

#Testing
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian testing main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US testing/non-US main contrib non-free

#Unstable
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian unstable main non-free contrib
deb http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US unstable/non-US main contrib non-free

You would probably want to add your mirrors, security.debian.org, and perhaps the appropriate deb-src lines. Here is a copy of my actual sources.list. preferences

The next step is to create/edit your /etc/apt/preferences file. preferences is where the apt-pinning takes place. Normally, the highest version of an available package wins, but we will override that.

A simple preferences file may look like this:

Package: *
Pin: release a=stable
Pin-Priority: 700

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 650

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 600

Note the decending values. Since Stable has the highest pin-priority, it will be installed preferentially over Testing or Unstable.

My actual preferences file is what you see above.