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I was looking at Python2.7 for debian jessie since my goal was to downgrade Python 2.7.13 to 2.7.10 or lower (running on OSMC which is now on stretch). From its name it looked like that package was version 2.7.9.

I added deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian jessie main to my /etc/apt/sources.list according to the instructions here, and since I only had one line marked jessie I then proceeded with:

apt-get install -t jessie python2.7

After that was done python --version gave me 2.7.15+. That's not really what I was going for.

I'm wondering where I made a wrong assumption?

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You’re trying to downgrade, and that can’t be done by setting the target release. When considering priorities, the first rule is

Never downgrade unless the priority of an available version exceeds 1000. ("Downgrading" is installing a less recent version of a package in place of a more recent version. Note that none of APT's default priorities exceeds 1000; such high priorities can only be set in the preferences file. Note also that downgrading a package can be risky.)

To downgrade, the simplest approach is to specify the release alongside the package:

sudo apt install python2.7/jessie

You’ll probably need to help the resolver out by specifying other packages to downgrade simultaneously. Depending on the packages you actually have installed, it might not even be possible...

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  • Thanks for the explanation! I'll try your suggestion. Commented Nov 23, 2018 at 16:33
  • Interesting. As you hinted, that broke the system. Time for another strategy. Commented Nov 23, 2018 at 17:24

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