notes

The examples assume using daedalus. Change to your version.

context

- installing devuan packages

cheatsheet

apt install <package>/bookworm-backports apt-get install <package>/bookworm-backports

What is Backports?

You are running Devuan stable, because you prefer the Debian stable tree. It runs great, there is just one problem: the software is a little bit outdated compared to other distributions. This is where backports come in.

what packages are backported?

On way is to download Packages.gz files from the backport section of the realease you are interested in.

@ Debian backports

Backports in Devuan

context

@ Debian backports @ Debian wiki / backports

Adding Backports to our apt Sources.

By Apt Sources i mean here ,unless specifically stated otherwise, the main community maintained and supported apt repositories. Other apt repositories are tagged as third party.

 
$ sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus-backports  main contrib non-free  non-free-firmware

Updating our local apt cache sources

When our local apt system has not updated the apt sources it knows then as we see in the command below our devuan system can not see backported version.

 
$ sudo apt-cache policy claws-mail
[sudo] password for chomwitt: 
claws-mail:
  Candidate: 4.1.1-2+b1
  Version table:
     4.1.1-2+b1 500
        500 http://deb.devuan.org/merged daedalus/main amd64 Packages

So we must make apt essentialy download the list of available backported packages:

 
$ sudo apt-get update

If we run apt-cache policy claws-mail again we will see that the backported newer version is also available.

Installing backports on the command line

The backports repository by default is low-priority. So, if we want to install a backported package, we have to set specifically in the apt options that choice .

Lets see an installation example of claws-mail :

 
$ sudo apt-get install claws-mail/daedalus-backports

Alternative syntax:

 
$ sudo apt-get install daedalus-backports claws-mail

Validate installation of the backported package

Lets validate know our installed version:

 
$ dpkg -l claws-mail
ii  claws-mail     4.3.1-1~bpo12+1 amd64        Fast, lightweight and user-friendly GTK based email client

Pull backported depedencies

A backported package could depend on other backported packages. In that case we must add the '-t'(--target-release) option. That will guide apt to prefer backported depedencies when needed.( @ref)

 
$ sudo apt-get install -t daedalus-backports <package>