[kwlug-disc] is it just me, or is debian package management painful?

[Paul Nijjar]

--- On Thu, 8/13/09, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca> wrote:

> > First thing you should do is update your Debian
> install 5.0 (Lenny). 3.1
> > (Sarge) has been obsolete for quite a while now. 
> I doubt that your
> > Sarge can be updated in place without breaking it
> badly.
> 
>   i already assumed that that size of upgrade would
> cause massive
> breakage.  but does debian upgrade have the ability to
> let me upgrade
> from, say, 3.1 to 3.2?  fix breakage.  3.2 to
> 3.3.  etc, etc.  it
> would actually be trememdously useful for me to be able to
> do that,
> even if it takes a little longer.


Yes. You can do this. This is one of the selling points. I think the basic principle is to add the repositories for the updated version to your sources.list, and then run aptitude full-upgrade (or aptitude dist-upgrade). I have not done this myself, though, so you will want to read up on the details and maybe make a full backup. 

You only need to upgrade from Sarge to Etch (3.1 to 4.0) and then from Etch to Lenny (4.0 to 5.0). 

To answer your other question about building individual .debs: you might want to check out dpkg-buildpackage and maybe pbuilder. 

- Paul




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