Installing packages from Debian unstable in a Docker image based on stable

For Datasette #1249 I wanted to build a Docker image from the python:3.9.2-slim-buster base image ("buster" is the current stable release of Debian) but include a single package from "sid", the unstable Debian distribution.

I needed to do this because the latest version of SpatiaLite, version 5, was available in sid but not in buster (which only has 4.3.0a):

https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=spatialite

The recipe that ended up working for me was to install software-properties-common to get the apt-get-repository command, then use that to install a package from sid:

RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get -y --no-install-recommends install software-properties-common && \
    add-apt-repository "deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian sid main" && \
    apt-get update && \
    apt-get -t sid install -y --no-install-recommends libsqlite3-mod-spatialite

Here's the full Dockerfile I used:

FROM python:3.9.2-slim-buster as build

# software-properties-common provides add-apt-repository
RUN apt-get update && \
    apt-get -y --no-install-recommends install software-properties-common && \
    add-apt-repository "deb http://httpredir.debian.org/debian sid main" && \
    apt-get update && \
    apt-get -t sid install -y --no-install-recommends libsqlite3-mod-spatialite && \
    apt clean && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/apt && \
    rm -rf /var/lib/dpkg

RUN pip install datasette && \
    find /usr/local/lib -name '__pycache__' | xargs rm -r && \
    rm -rf /root/.cache/pip

EXPOSE 8001
CMD ["datasette"]

Created 2021-03-22T14:42:43-07:00 · Edit

Installing packages from Debian unstable in a Docker image based on stable

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