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 It runs great, there is just one problem: the software is a little bit outdated compared to other distributions.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](https://wiki.debian.org/Backports))

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