Install GnuCash in Debian testing from unstable


Tips and tricks

I just found that gnucash is not available in Debian testing! How do I install it then?

The Debian gnucash package was removed of testing on August 1st., 2017.  The gnucash package depends on libgoffice-0.8 which was removed from testing on December 28th., 2017.  We want only the gnucash and libgoffice-0.8 packages to be installed from unstable, all other dependencies should be installed from testing.  When we run apt update && apt upgrade periodically, everything should be downloaded from testing, and we do not want gnucash or libgoffice-0.8 to be updated, in order to keep our Debian testing system pure and not using a mixture of testing and unstable packages.  The steps I used are these:

  1. add rows for unstable in the /etc/apt/sources.list file

  2. create an /etc/apt/preferences file

  3. run apt update

  4. run apt install -d gnucash/unstable.  The packages will be downloaded only and not installed; check that only 3 gnucash and 3 libgoffice-0.8 packages are downloaded from unstable, the rest should be downloaded from testing.  If this is correct, continue to step 5.

  5. run apt install gnucash/unstable

The rows for unstable in /etc/apt/sources.list are shown below:

deb http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/ testing main
deb-src http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/ testing main

deb http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/ unstable main
deb-src http://ftp.mx.debian.org/debian/ unstable main

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security testing/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security testing/updates main

The content of /etc/apt/preferences:

Package: *
Pin: release unstable
Pin-Priority: -10

Before using the above install steps, I installed from the source package as suggested here and it worked.  I then tried installing from the binary package as explained above because it is a faster option.