Hi Otavio, sorry, haven't got your reply, saw it only on the web today.
I surely want to keep my sarge system up to date. But I also don't want to loose installed packages on an upgrade by unmet dependencies. As an example: If I would run an apt-get dist-upgrade on my sytem today it would remove me the (installed) package apt-listchanges. But I don't want to loose this nice tool! # apt-get dist-upgrade Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done Calculating Upgrade... Done The following packages will be REMOVED: apt-file* apt-listchanges* ... So I have to say "no". If I use apt-get upgrade it doesn't remove the package apt-listchanges, ok. But on the other hand it does not upgrade packages which require the installation of additional (previously not installed) packages on upgrade. # apt-get upgrade Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done The following packages have been kept back ... bind9 bind9-host dnsutils ... (requires installation of extra packages libdns11, libisc7, ...) So I need a kind of "middle" way, an option which allows me to keep my system up to date as much as possible without loosing already installed packages. It's difficult to do this with hold or pinning, because I would have to remove the hold state or pin from time to time (on every update/upgrade run?) to see if the unmet dependencies are resolved now. BTW, how can a package get into testing with such basically unmet dependencies? This state keeps on for months ... # apt-get install apt-listchanges ... Sorry, but the following packages have unmet dependencies: apt-listchanges: Depends: python (>= 2.3) but 2.1.3-4 is to be installed Regards Uwe
