Unix & Linux Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I put jessie-backports in my /etc/apt/sources.list, but it seems that apt will not automatically use the packages from backports but older packages.
However, if I use apt-cache show to check the version it shows the latest, and I am able to use apt install xxx=<latest-version> to install it.
How to tell apt always use the latest package by default?
As @cutrightjm has mentioned apt-pinning is the solution.
If you create a file /etc/apt/preferences.d/backports with the following content
Package: *
Pin: release a=stretch-backports
Pin-Priority: 800
apt will always install packages from stretch-backports, except when you pin another package source with a priority higher than 800.
If you want to see all available versions of a package, their priority and which one will be installed, you can use apt-cache policy <packagename>.
