Adding non-ubuntu packages

[Abdullah Ramazanoglu]

Derek Broughton dedi ki:
> On Friday 29 April 2005 17:30, John wrote:
>> On Friday 29 April 2005 20:57, Derek Broughton wrote:
>>
>>> Is there a way to either add the debian repository to
>>> /etc/apt/sources.list and have it not generally checked, or to use an
>>> alternate source list when I want to get something from another
>>> repository?

Admittedly I've used Debian only for servers and been quite conservative
with repos until recently (until Kanotix64 and Kubuntu). I'm still trying
to catch up with good repo juggling and pinning practices. :)

That said, I guess a good way could be mixing all the repos with such a
pinning that only packages missing in the official repos would be fetched
from unofficial ones. IOW if a package exists in an official repo, it will
never be fetched from unofficial ones regardless of their versions. This
might lead to somewhat restrictive environment, but at least if something
goes awry with a package it would only break that package and wouldn't
harm the system in general.

E.g if foo-1.2 in an external repo needs bar-3.4, which is also found in
the same repo, but if bar-3.3 exists in the official repo, then you
wouldn't be able to install foo, because it's dependency (bar-3.4) can't
be installed due to pinning. But if an external baz-5.6 can be installed
within such pinning rules, AFAICS there's no way it can break anything
(except itself) wrt apt system.

Such a pinning would also allow bold mixing of incompatible repos and save
quite a few hairs and sleeping hours in exchange of a relatively minor
inconvenience. Good trade-off, I'd say. Now, if only I knew how to do such
pinning... :)

  --8<--
> I found a decent guide to apt pinning, which is what I thought I wanted
> to use in the first place, where I was just told it was a bad idae.

apt-howto or else? I'm also looking for good docs to apt pinning and repo
mixing.

Best regards
-- 
Abdullah Ramazanoglu
aramazan ÄT myrealbox D0T cöm