Why are the Raspbian repositories so out of date?

Question

I'm trying to install Owncloud, which is currently at version 6.0.3. However, Raspbian's version is from about two years ago.

$ apt-cache show owncloud
Package: owncloud
Version: 4.0.4debian2-3.3

Similarly, Raspbian deluge (1.3.3) is well over two years old.

Is this common for many Raspbian packages?
Why does this repository lag behind so much?
Is there a way to get newer packages another repository, and/or would installing Pidora or Arch help?

Because all the new stuff is going into Jessie.. but Jessie is not 100% ready for ARM yet. I wrote somewhere on this site how to use Jessie to get certain latest packages. — Piotr Kula, Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 9:08
Also, the main Debian repos are different to the Raspbian ones (i think...), so even though version 6.0.3 it seems to be there for wheezy, i think it may take a while to filter over the raspbian ones (e.g. recompiling may be required for the Raspberry Pi's architecture/hardware) — Wilf, Commented Jun 9, 2014 at 19:06
Did you ever manage to solve your problem? Please answer your question or mark one correct. Thanks — Piotr Kula, Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 15:04
@ppumkin I didn't get a reply from my comment 1.5 years ago. I can't remember clearly now, but I think that I had some kind of issue (as per the comment). I guess this question is now out-of-date, so probably best to just close it. — Sparhawk, Commented Dec 23, 2015 at 21:41
Greetings from the future, @SDsolar! Yes, I updated to stretch a couple of months ago. Took a day or so; I had problems with apache security mods and mysql. Apart from that it worked okay. — Sparhawk, Commented Aug 22, 2017 at 1:58

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-13 12:56:25Z

1

I know link updates are frowned upon, but this is an internal link to what you need.

Half way down that answer it shows how you can select packages from Jessie repository so you can install the latest ones will be there.

CommunityBot

1

answered Jun 6, 2014 at 9:11

Piotr Kula

17.3k6 gold badges66 silver badges105 bronze badges

Thanks, I'll give that a go after I've fixed my pi.
– Sparhawk
Commented Jun 6, 2014 at 14:36
I fixed my pi and followed your instructions to the tee, but apt-get upgrade is now trying to pull upgrades from the jessie repo, specifically jessie/main linux-libc-dev armhf 3.13.10-1+rpi1+b2.
– Sparhawk
Commented Jun 13, 2014 at 5:16
How about a whole new OS? Here it is, released Aug 2017: raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/71462/…
– SDsolar
Commented Aug 22, 2017 at 1:39
This addresses the complaint, "I don't like it that repositories are out od date" If you think that is the question intended, you should urge the OP. Personally I'm quite interested to know why they are, but the answer is probably mundane. Nobody has come around to update them.
– Albert van der Horst
Commented Aug 1, 2020 at 18:04
I think the newer versions are a lot more up to date now?? I know Jessie was very slow since not many people testing ARM based distros. But that should have changed drastically now as ARM is getting very, very popular and more PR's and updates should be coming in and available. Also its a lot easier to build ARM packages now, before they had a small ARM Server that was overloaded and couldn't cope with all the builds getting queued.
– Piotr Kula
Commented Aug 10, 2020 at 12:49

Add a comment |

1 Answer 1