Help for using aptitude to install samizdat in debian

samizdat: SamizdatEngine

Table of content :

stable

As of Nov 2007, samizdat is not yet in debian stable.

testing or experimental

WARNING Some of these instructions refer to specific versions of programs, e.g. ruby1.8, postgresql-8.1. At the time you read this, these might be out of date. Interactive use of aptitude should be able to help you sort out these dependency problems. Try info aptitude for more info. If you have an old system without aptitude, try apt-get install aptitude.

1. Add samizdat to or create /etc/apt/preferences:

Package: samizdat
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 1200

Package: libsamizdat-ruby1.8
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 1200

Package: libsamizdat-ruby
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority: 1200

Package: *
Pin: release a=experimental
Pin-Priority: -50

Try info apt_preferences for more info.

testing Put "testing" instead of "experimental" in /etc/apt/preferences if you want the testing version. In practice, the testing version is fairly stable.

2. sources.list

Put a debian mirror in /etc/apt/sources.list e.g.

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ experimental main non-free contrib

3. update

aptitude update

4. install binaries, shared files, config files, help files and dependencies

aptitude install samizdat postgresql-8.1 apache2-mpm-prefork \
  libapache2-mod-ruby libapache-ruby1.8 libgettext-ruby1.8 \
  libalgorithm-diff-ruby1.8 libredcloth-ruby1.8

5. read, understand and follow the steps in the locally installed help:

less /usr/share/doc/samizdat/README.Debian
zless /usr/share/doc/samizdat/install.txt.gz

To understand a package you don't know, try info package, ls /usr/share/doc/package/ and zless /usr/share/doc/package/<file_name>, the english language wikipedia page on that package or a search engine such as google.

README.Debian is specifically for debian and in principle should be enough to get your local site functioning. install.txt is more general and should help you understand the steps needed even if you have already followed the steps in README.Debian.

6. Problems?

At the moment, there is no users' mailing list for samizdat, so feel free to ask for help on the developers' mailing list or report bugs if you have found a reproducible bug.

This page is a wiki page. Please update it/correct it if you find errors or can improve it.