Running Typo svn on Debian Stable (Sarge)

After numerous attempts to upgrade this site to the latest version of Typo and the current version of Ruby on Rails I’ve finally succeeded. The things that tripped me up were:

  • Debian `stable` ships Ruby 1.8.2. Whilst this is fine for Rails 1.1 I couldn’t migrate to Typo svn’s schema which I thought meant I needed 1.8.4. I didn’t
  • I was running Postgres 7.4.7 (again Debian default which was causing the migration problems

Once I’d figured my way past those I’m now running Postgresql from Debian Backports and Ruby 1.8.4 of my own concoction, with Rails 1.1 (from gems, not debs). A side effect of this is that my old theme was broken on Typo svn so for the time being I’ve switched to Scribbish which is a fantastic theme for for general use and to base your own on – which I shall be doing shortly.

Here’s what I did to solve the package issues I had.

  1. Backporting Ruby 1.8.4 from `unstable`

Because there aren’t any offical backports of Ruby 1.8.4 available, you’ll need to roll your own from `unstable` Here’s how:

Add the following line to your `/etc/apt/sources.list`:

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

You’ll probably want to change the repository URL to suit.

You’ll need to do an `apt-get update` then you can carry out the following as `root`:

$ apt-get source ruby1.8
$ apt-get build-dep ruby1.8
$ apt-get install devscripts
$ cd ruby1.8-1.8.4
$ debuild -us -uc

Your deb’s will be placed in the parent folder of `ruby1.8-1.8.4`.

You may want to do the same for `ri`, `rdoc`, `irb` and `rake` (I did).

  1. Installing Postgresql 8.1

This is much easier to do, but be warned if you’re upgrading from 7.4: you should backup all your databases and remove (or better yet) purge your existing installed packages. If you don’t you can end up in a mess (I did).

Add the following line to your `/etc/apt/sources.list`:

deb http://www.backports.org/debian sarge-backports main

Edit the file `/etc/apt/preferences` (you may need to create it) and add the following:

Package: *
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 200
Package: postgresql-8.1
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 999
Package: postgresql-common
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 999
Package: lsb-base
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 999
Package: ssl-cert
Pin: release a=sarge-backports
Pin-Priority: 999

Now installing is as simple as:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install postgresql-8.1

This is why I love Debian and it’s offspring.