SBUILD-HOLD(1)

📦
version 0.89.3 · 10 versions
, in debian trixie

💅 SBUILD-HOLD 💅

okay bestie, welcome to the sbuild-hold girlies club — this is a page from the Debian sbuild manual, and it's genuinely the cutest little utility. no cap. let's get into it 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

sbuild-hold — hold packages in an sbuild chroot. that's it, that's the vibe. 🫶

(and yes, its little sibling sbuild-unhold is here too, they come as a set 💖)

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

sbuild-hold   [-h|--help | -V|--version] CHROOT [PACKAGE1 [PACKAGE2 [PACKAGEn]]]
sbuild-unhold [-h|--help | -V|--version] CHROOT [PACKAGE1 [PACKAGE2 [PACKAGEn]]]

like, look at that. so clean. so demure. 🦋

💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

so here's the tea, bestie:

  • sbuild-hold sets the dpkg hold status for the packages you name 📌
  • sbuild-unhold unsets that dpkg hold status, respectively 💅

they're literally two sides of the same coin. iconic behavior.

🔥 OPTIONS 🔥

⭐ Actions

  • -h, --help — displays this manual (hi, you're reading it, you're doing amazing 💜)
  • -V, --version — prints version information, for when you gotta know 👑

🧚 Chroot and package selection

  • CHROOT — the chroot you're working with. lowkey the best part: you can use the single letters o, s, t, u and e as abbreviations for oldstable, stable, testing, unstable and experimental, respectively. so convenient, we stan. ✨
  • PACKAGE — the packages whose hold status is getting changed. this is the main character of the operation tbh 👑

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

wanna hold the libc6 package in the unstable chroot? periodt. do this:

% sbuild-hold unstable libc6

ate. no notes. 🔥

💖 AUTHORS 💖

Roger Leigh. — the legend, the icon, the moment. we love them for this. 👑

Copyright © 2006–2007 Roger Leigh <rleigh@debian.org>.

🫶 SEE ALSO 🫶

  • sbuild(1) — go read it bestie, it's the whole ecosystem 🦋
💀 reminder: hold status is a real dpkg thing, so sbuild-hold actually changes it — this isn't just a vibe check, it does the thing. respect the tools fr fr.

k bye, ily, go hold some packages responsibly 💕✨

— signed off with love from Version 0.89.3+deb13u4, dated 28 December 2025 🎀👑💜

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