OK, I have a couple of things here. One is a general inquiry "Is it possible to add only one 'unstable' package through the Debian Package manager?", I use aptitude by choice. Second is if not, how to best fix my particular issue.

On the current stable version of Debian Lenny 5 the current package for pidgin is 2.4.3. All well and dandy. Unfortunately due to some recent upgrades by yahoo! this product no longer will connect to the Yahoo instant messenger service. This is a known issue, and you need at least pidgin 2.5.8 to work, per http://www.pidgin.im/

The current sid (unstable) version of Debian has 2.5.8.

As per http://packages.debian.org/sid/pidgin I added my local sid to my sources.list

then when i run apt-get it shows that i have 550 available upgrades (previously it only showed 30)

When i run apt-get install pidgin, (i had previously removed the 2.4.3 via aptitude) it gets part way threw the procedure then give me several errors on dependencies not being available and that they have be obsolete or removed.

So, the real question is is possible, or advisable (I'm pretty sure that latter is no, but I'd like to know for sure) to install one package via sid and leave the rest stable, and secondly if there is any other good solution.

I'm considering also either reinstalling the stable version of pidgin (or leaving it uninstalled altogether) and running the nightly build of Mozilla Instant bird http://www.instanatbird.com instead as my primary instant messenger. I currently do have the stable version of that installed in my home directory and it runs, but has the same Yahoo! problems, I've tried running the nightly build of 0.2preA on my windoze box and it worked well. The Instantbird community seemed very welcoming, at least in their IRC channel #instant bird on irc.mozilla.org, and I may just do that anyways, but I'd like to get y'all's opinion on it.

Currently I commented out the sid repo from my sources.list so apt-get only shows 30 available upgrades. My machine is pretty slow, so if I don't HAVE to update I usually don't.

You really don't want to mix packages from Sid into Stable.
Debian's developers go to great lengths to make sure Lenny is as stable as an o/s can be.
It's not just one package,it will require dependencies also.
Here's an example from my mixed Testing/Sid system:

So i would say if you want to stay with Lenny,compile Pidgin from source.
Or the other possibility is run mixed Testing/Sid system.And use package from Sid.The following how-to is really helpful:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.p...asc&highlight=

Or you could take a walk on the wildside and run pure Sid!
Hope this is of some use.

Edit:Forgot to mention there is a more recent version of pidgin in Backports:

http://packages.debian.org/lenny-backports/pidgin

Unfortunately it's not 2.5.8.

I had that same problem too. I did install the sid version of pidgin in lenny, but had to upgrade several files plus a few Xorg files from sid to make it happen. It wasn't pretty but it works. The desktop is pretty solid still.

trying to compile from source seems to be not be a good option for me. everytime I ran ./configure I would learn of yet another *-dev package I needed to properly compile it. AFter 1 1/2 hours of this, I decided, "enough of this" and installed the nightly build of Mozilla Instant bird, and for now its running well. I went ahead and removed all the packages I had added while trying to compile Pidgin to free up some more space.

Eventually I will want to become more efficient at compiling from source (and at least now I'm learning why I had troubles before) but I'm still not there yet.

Just so you know for the future,if you want to compile from source with Debian:

aptitude install build-essential

This will give you the appropriate tools and dependencies.

Try this.

apt-get install build-essential
apt-get build-dep pidgin
wait a while
add a deb-src line (NOT a deb line) for unstable to sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get source -b pidgin
dpkg -i pidgin-something.deb

Hopefully, you'll be able to build the pidgin from Sid with the build dependences in Lenny.

This may or may not be the appropriate place to post this as its technically a new issue, but stems from the same problem.

Instantbird is designed to run cding to the directory that you extracted it into and then running the program by ./

so in my case I've tried to right an executable so that I can launch that from my desktop.

Neither what I wrote, nor directly from terminal does

work.

What would be appropriate command to start this, or any similar executable?

Note the removed space. If that doesn't work, we kind of need an error message.

I appologize for miss typing a space previously, however I did not include the space, this is not my issue.

No error message is given simply nothing happens and terminal returns to a new line

Are you sure it's not running?

It sure didn't pop up a window like I would expect. And sually if I run a prgroam from terminal it will not open a new $ line in terminal, menaing I can't typ anything I

~$ ./home/jim/downloads/instantbird/instant brd

wait a few seconds

~$

It's best if you do what AlucardZero suggested and create your own backport of Pidgin. That way you won't break your system by adding numerous Sid packages and Pidgin will be compiled to the likings of Lenny.

The way I'd do it is below:

Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file to include the line below:

(change the country code to suit. Also note that it's deb-src, not deb)

The line above will only be used to pull in source packages that you request; nothing from Sid will be pulled in through a package update, so it's safe.

Still as root

The above will update your lists and then install the essential building tools you need to compile your stuff. Fakeroot is important to carry out some building functions without the need to go to root. The final line will install the dev packages you need to build Pidgin. Note that I've added "/unstable" to the end of Pidgin; I do that so that the dependencies of Sid's Pidgin (currently 2.5.8) are met and not those of Lenny's (2.4.3). At the moment, I think they're the same, so you can skip doing this for now, but that might change. For instance, I also backport htop, and the one in Sid has different build depends than those of the Lenny one.

Now as a normal user, I cd to a directory that's free (or just make one somewhere... you can delete it afterwards if you want).

Note that I use apt-get instead of aptitude for this. I do this because aptitude can't deal with downloading source packages yet (wish it could, but I can live with it). Also note I'm not root to do this. The -t option is to choose the unstable deb-src repository instead of your Lenny one. What will happen is that you'll find that apt-get has downloaded and extracted some files and a directory into the build directory you created. You'll find a pidgin-2.5.8 directory, and three other files (original tar.gz, a dsc and a diff.gz). Forget the files, just leave them be, it's the directory we want. cd into the new directory (pidgin-2.5.8), then carry out the command below:

Now sit back and wait. If you have a slow machine, then your wait will be longer... maybe long enough to read a few pages of your paper or that book you're dying to read... or just go surfing on the Net for a while. I've added nice to the front of the line, because this process is CPU intensive, so at least nice will allow you to use your machine to some extent while your CPU gets hammered (feel free to read up on man nice to see what it does... or just omit it if you don't care).

The rest of the line will build you some .debs. Fakeroot, as I said, is used so you don't have to be root to compile. The other two options are for not signing your packages... which seeing you're not a developer who's going to share this stuff about, will not matter, so include both those options (-us -uc).

Now, after a while, you'll get your prompt back and the compilation has finished. You'll want to cd back up to find the .debs, which will be in the directory above (in our case, it'll be build).

Those three are the essential ones to install. If you need Finch or other packages, you'll find those .debs included. Your .debs might not be i386, so change accordingly.

There you go, now you have the latest Pidgin on Lenny.

BTW, you'll need to keep up to date with the latest versions of Pidgin due to security fixes, etc. Your normal update process won't be downloading and installing new Pidgin versions with security fixes for Lenny, so you'll have to keep an eye out for new versions and security fixes yourself. I usually RSS the Pidgin site and also the Overview of pidgin source package page, where you'll find the latest developments of the Pidgin package in Debian.

When you're comfortable doing this, it's worth reading up about debian/rules and the other files found in the source's debian/ directory. You can alter stuff there to suit your needs... but that's for another day.

Sorry if this is long-winded, but it's not as intimidating as it might appear. I'm just trying to be thorough... which can be a pain.

BTW, this thread in Debian User Forums, titled HowTo Build a Package from Source the Smart Way, makes interesting reading about this subject and the use of other methods. Sorry if mentioning a link to another board is a faux pas, but I feel it adds greatly to this discussion.

as far as my other, launching instantbird without CDing to the directory, apparently I was trying to hard...

while although while in the /instantbird directory I would have to

for whatever reason from another directory the "." is not necessary from ~ I simply

and it always launches with no problem. Still yet to figure out why on Windows the Nightly Build automatically downloads the new verison each night, and on Linux I have to actually tell it to download Instantbird 0.2bPre... from the TOOLS menu, but oh well.

IF (and I mean IF) all dependencies are met.

# dpkg -i <package.deb>

Which you can download without updating your repositories by going to packages.debian.org (assuming debian). Otherwise compiling from source is your best / most sure fire bet.

There are some things that you want to compile from source anyway. A kernel compiled for your architecture. Drivers external to the kernel. Media players compiled specific to your architecture. A GUI / X environment specific to your architecture can really boost performance. That and if you're doing any semi-cutting edge media editing, your camcorder might only be supported on the latest and greatest version(s) of ffmpeg or mencoder or ???. Lots of reason to compile from source.

Yes you need a lot of -dev's that are NOT installed by default to compile from source. But if you're on a dialup connection -dev's are tiny in comparison to other things. Annoying to keep grabbing the missing ones. But you can generally get a list of dependencies from the download site for the source package which could cut your trial and error guess as you go efforts. And yes, ncurses, automake, autoconf, scons, imake, gcc, build-essential and friends might only be needed if compiling from source. But you'll need them eventually if you plan on doing anything developmental on your machine.

Or just wait six months for the updated version of pidgin and friends to make it into the repositories.

What's the difference? I've always used them interchangeably. Something must be better about aptitude our you wouldn't want it to handle source packages.

That doesn't mean I don't want to get to this point though. I wouldn't be running Debian if I was happy just caring for ME.

Believe me, I appreciate it. It was a bit to take in, as you can tell as it took me quite a while to actually respond to your post. I honestly can say this was the single most helpful post I've ever read anywhere. I still haven't even done this particular setup yet. I really have fell in love with Mozilla Instantbird. I've actually been writing bug reports for them now and testing their new software. At the very least this information will be helpful in the future, and it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to have the current stable version of Pidgin on the same machine to compare functionality with development nightly builds of Instantbird.

I'm certain its not faux pas as long as your helping and brining useful information somewhere so that someone else can find it (sure search engines like Google, and my preference, Ixquick, are great, but there's a big internet out there,and I'd probably never have found that without you.