I’m on Debian 12. I did an upgrade today and got a message that pipewire-audio had been kept back. A few weeks ago I did a:
sudo apt install -t bookworm-backports pipewire
Which pulled in the newer version of pipewire so I could resolve an issue.
So I searched for ‘apt kept back’ and found the above article. I wanted to share it for anyone else in the future hitting something like this.
My solution is just to do nothing. Debian 13 should only be a few months away at this point and when I attempt to run an update only for pipewire-audio it indicates that I need to update wireplumber. I don’t really want to go down the dependency hole at this time, so just going to let it chill.
A package is “kept back” when it faces requirements that can’t be resolved while adhering to the given options.
For example, this can happen when a dependency at a certain version is required, but that version is available only from a source (e.g. backports) whose priority is too low to be used by default*. You can resolve this particular situation by naming not only the main package, but also the dependency in question, on your
apt install -t bookworm-backportscommand line. (The-t bookworm-backportsoption overrides the default source priorities.)Looking at the dependencies of pipewire-audio in backports, I see that one of them (wireplumber) has a version requirement that can be satisfied from backports, so this might work for you:
sudo apt install -t bookworm-backports pipewire wireplumberBTW, I’m sure that pipewire from backports works on Bookworm, because I use it myself. You don’t have to wait for Trixie.
*You can get details about how the priority system works via
man apt_preferences.That’s awesome! Thank you so much for the thorough explanation. :-)
Yeah the whole reason for packages being kept back is because they are rolling them out slowly to ensure that no major bugs affect the great majority of users of those packages.
You wouldn’t want your whole Ubuntu or Debian user base getting stuck with the same problem and having to roll back all at the same time. availa roll out certain packages slowly so only a small portion have to do it, and also save your reputation, and finally give the package maintainers to fix the problem.
Thanks! I was wondering why that was. I looked at pipewire and it had been updated. That’s smart. Very happy to be on a stable base of Debian.
Yeah the whole reason for packages being kept back is because they are rolling them out slowly
That’s an Ubuntu extension to APT. I don’t think Debian adopted it, and even if they had, this particular “kept back” message probably comes from a different mechanism.
EDIT: OP is trying to install a backport of a package with a version-specific dependency; I’ll address that situation in a top-level comment.
I dunno. Sounds like a repo-specific thing. OP is on Debian 12 and what I’m understanding is they’re also seeing this message for a third party repo.
