How can I access Raspbian Jessie packages from Wheezy?

Question

I need a package that's in jessie, the newer version of Raspbian, but not in wheezy, the one I have installed. Can I use it somehow? Can/should I just upgrade to jessie?

Answer 1

Can I use it somehow?

Maybe -- you can try. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sources.list and add a line:

deb http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/ jessie main

Then run apt-get update. This may take a few minutes. Searching for the package should now show it, and you can try apt-get install [whatever]. You may have to pull in further substantial updates from jessie.

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Can/should I just upgrade to jessie?

You can [as of Sept/2015, you probably should], but read the caveats below first.

First add the line as above above to sources.list, then:

apt-get dist-upgrade

You may also want to comment out the wheezy line from the sources.list above to prevent clutter or confusion in the future.

A few things to note about this:

• It requires a substantial download (1/2 GB+) and takes a while in addition to that (perhaps a few hours), during which time you must occasionally answer questions.

• It changes the init system to systemd, replacing the older SysV init. You can install a compatibility package if this proves awkward.