Debian: How can I pull a single package with dependencies from another repository?

Question

I am on debian etch and I want to pull subversion1.5.1 from testing though it is a production machine. I need to keep the risk minimal.

Any hints?

Answer 1

Probably the best thing you can do is download the .deb file for that software and install it with dpkg.

Answer 2

Just add the testing repository to your sources.list and pin the priority of the testing packages to a very low value:

Add the following to /etc/apt/preferences:

Package: *
Pin: release a=testing
Pin-Priority: 200

200 means that new packages in testing still override local packages that are not in stable (local is always 100), but not ones that are in the stable repo as well.

Read apt_preferences(5) for more information on pinning.

Then, you can install packages from testing by doing

$ apt-get install -t testing $some_package

but they won't be installed by normal upgrade operations or won't be the default when installed with apt.