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Apt pinning on Debian

Configuration

The apt pinning consist in adding repository on demand, very helpful for hot stuff unavailable on your branch (tipicaly stable or testing). We'll take for example a Debian testing installation and add pinning for unstable. The principles presented are the same for other combinations.

Edit or create (doesn't exists by default) /etc/apt/preferences and put this into

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

Package: *
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 800

TODO comments & explanations

Add unstable repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

## pinning sid
deb http://ftp2.fr.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp2.fr.debian.org/debian/ sid main contrib non-free

Update your repository: aptitude update

You can now get packages from unstable on demand

Usage

You simply add -t unstable to your apt installation command: aptitude install -t unstable mypackage

You can check the availability of a package with apt-cache policy which will present a list of available versions of the package group by branches.

TODO sample

Initial author: olivier Last modification date: January the 30th, 2009 by olivier.