On Mon, 11 Jul 2005, Benjamin Sher wrote:
Dear friends:
A follow-up question:
If you install the current sarge stable release, can you install deb
packages from any earlier releases? That is, either earlier stable
or testing deb packages? What's the hierarchy here: sarge stable,
earlier stable, earlier testing, etc.
First, the 'stable' and 'testing' labels, are transitory things and change
as Debian versions go through their life cycle. So it is usually better,
IMHO, to think of the Debian versions by codename (e.g potato, woody,
sarge, etch, etc.) or by number (e.g. 2.2, 3.0, 3.1, etc.).
So I think your question is can you install packages from woody or potato
(for example) onto a sarge system.
You can't usually install packages from either earlier or later
Debian releases. Debian packages consist of the compiled applications
(with docs, configuration files, etc.) and are compiled against a specific
set of libararies that are present (or that would be installed along
with the new package) on the system. This is what the 'dependency' info
is all about in the package definition and why other applications or
libaries will be installed with a particular application that you want to
install.
Normally you wouldn't want or need to install packages from version of
Debian different from that which you are running. The cases that I know of
where you'd want to do this are usually when a old package is dropped from
the Debian version that you are using (but you still need it) or more
usually, when there is a new version of an application that you want to
use that isn't in the Debian version you are using. And, of course,
remember that you can always compile and install a package (that hasn't
been packaged for Debian) too.
The most usual thing is installing a newer version of a package. There is
a semi-organized way to do this, see <http://www.backports.org>
Quite confused.
That's quite all right. We all were (or still are) at some point in time.
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