apt-aside

apt-aside is a series of shell scripts intended to enable the installation of Debian Testing packages on a Debian Stable system without compromising the stability of the system. It achieves this by creating a second Debian installation in your home directory. It avoids the overhead of running an entire container or VM, like that of distrobox.

What Doesn't Work

The following packages will not work:

• Daemons
• Packages that have postinstall scripts that require real root (note: scripts that work via fakeroot will work fine)
• Packages that depend on a kernel that is newer than that of Debian Stable
• Packages that depend on daemons newer than that of your current system

What Will Work

Development tools, programming languages, most GUI apps, and more.

Dependencies

apt-aside requires the following packages to already be installed on your system:

• fakeroot
• fakechroot
• git
• GNU coreutils
• bash (bash must be installed, but it is fine if it is not your main shell)

apt-aside also relies on debootstrap during installation, but will clone it into /tmp for you, and delete it when the installation is complete. apt-aside only works on x86-64 systems, aka amd64.

Installation

./install.sh

After the installation is complete, follow the on-screen instructions to add apt-aside to your PATH.

Usage

Example:

apt-get-aside update
apt-get-aside upgrade
apt-get-aside install nasm
apt-get-aside expose nasm
nasm --version

apt-aside-bash

Launches a fakeroot and fakechroot bash into apt-aside's Debian Testing installation.

apt-aside-expose

Usage: apt-aside-expose [package name]
Adds all of the binaries of a package that is installed in apt-aside's Debian installation to your PATH.

apt-get-aside

Alias: apt-aside-get
The apt-get binary of apt-aside's Debian installation. See the usage of apt-get.

None of these commands require root.

License

apt-aside is licensed under the MIT license. See license.txt.