pinning R packages to unstable?

| This is more of an apt question rather than R.  I have a testing Debian
| system, but would like to use the unstable packages for R, *without* using
| the -t flag in apt-get.  I think this is done by using a 'pin' rule in
| /etc/apt/apt.conf, but don't understand how this should be done.  Can
| somebody provide an example please?

Beats me, but I'd use it too if I knew how to :)  

Dirk

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison

Dear Debian R users,

This is more of an apt question rather than R.  I have a testing Debian
system, but would like to use the unstable packages for R, *without* using
the -t flag in apt-get.  I think this is done by using a 'pin' rule in
/etc/apt/apt.conf, but don't understand how this should be done.  Can
somebody provide an example please?

See section 3.10 in

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html

Regards,

markus

Cheers,

Markus Jantti
Abo Akademi University
markus.jantti at iki.fi
http://www.iki.fi/~mjantti

| > Dear Debian R users,
| > 
| > This is more of an apt question rather than R.  I have a testing Debian
| > system, but would like to use the unstable packages for R, *without* using
| > the -t flag in apt-get.  I think this is done by using a 'pin' rule in
| > /etc/apt/apt.conf, but don't understand how this should be done.  Can
| > somebody provide an example please?
| 
| See section 3.10 in
| 
| http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/apt-howto/ch-apt-get.en.html

For some bizarre reason that web version is older than both the apt-howto-en
versions in testing and unstable, neither one of which still contains that
subsection you mention.

The key would be to derive a regexp for all CRAN packages. Simply using

Package: r-cran-*
Pin: release a=unstable
Pin-Priority: 900

in /etc/apt/prefences does not do the trick.

Dirk

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something. 
                                                  -- Thomas A. Edison