Using snapshot.debian.org for downgrading Debian packages

Source

Nice tricks I found out trying to unfuck my laptop's setup, all my fault:

  • You can use snapshot.debian.org to recover packages for any date for any release that was available at that date. I actually new this, but somehow I forgot. I used deb http://snapshot.debian.org/archive/debian/20150720T214439Z/ testing main.

  • For that you have to disable the Packages-file-too-old check, which I have never seen, ever. Put this in any file in your /etc/apt.conf.d dir:

Acquire {
    Check-Valid-Until "false";
}

  • aptitude has a menu bar (activate with C-t), a preferences dialog, and you can set it up so any operation with a package moves down the cursor. Finally I figure that out.

  • It also has a dselect theme, but I was not brave enough to try it (for the record, I love dselect, I miss the fact that it shows how dependencies are resolved in the moment they're needed).

  • You can disable aptitude's resolver (-o Aptitude::ProblemResolver::StepLimit=0), but it doesn't make the UI that much more responsive (???).

  • digikam is not on testing right now. It FTBFS with gcc5 and has a licence problem.

  • Don't ride Debian sid right now, it's suffering a gcc transition and it might take a while.