For Users

Debian Fast Track is a repository that allows making "backports" of packages available to users of the stable distribution, if those packages cannot be maintained in testing and backported in the usual way.

Checkout https://fasttrack.debian.net for using packages from Debian FastTrack repository (pay attention to configure sources.list according to your current version: i.e. bookworm if on bookworm, instead of bullseye, mentioned there). Some of the software currently available via FastTrack include Gitlab, Virtual Box, Singularity container. Matrix Synapse was in buster-fasttrack briefly (now it is available in backports).

For querying packages, you can use rmadison from devscripts package. Install devscripts package and configure it by editing ~/.devscripts 

RMADISON_URL_MAP_FASTTRACK=https://fasttrack.debian.net/api/madison

Now you can query packages by using rmadison with -u fasttrack

Eg: rmadison -u fasttrack gitlab

If you want to know what packages are all provided by fasttrack but don't want to add it to your SourcesList you can use chdist from devscripts. 

# apt-get install fasttrack-archive-keyring devscripts
$ chdist create fasttrack
$ rm ~/.chdist/fasttrack/etc/apt/sources.list
$ cp /usr/share/doc/fasttrack-archive-keyring/examples/debian-fasttrack.sources ~/.chdist/fasttrack/etc/apt/sources.list.d # May fail and need to be provided manually
$ ln -s /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/fasttrack-archive-keyring.gpg ~/.chdist/fasttrack/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/
$ chdist apt fasttrack update
$ chdist apt fasttrack list

Presentation at DebConf 22 in Kosovo:

Server space is provided by Infomaniak (thanks to Zigo).

Archived version of the website at https://archive.is/7QPDI can be used as a fallback option if the main site is not accessible.

For maintainers

See https://fasttrack.debian.net/#FAQ for frequently asked questions about Fast Track.

Deciding which suite to target

  1. Packages permanently blocked from official backports go to -fasttrack.
  2. Others go to official -backports (if also relevant outside -fasttrack) or -backports-staging (for convenience).

We can upload a package to backports only if it is in testing already. Also first time upload to backports usually takes at least a week to clear backports-NEW. If we don't want to wait for a package to reach testing or clear backports-NEW, we upload to backports-staging. If a package is useful for others and not just for gitlab, we try to upload to backports.

We have simplified the sections from bookworm, see https://salsa.debian.org/fasttrack-team/support/-/issues/34 for the proposal. Earlier we used to upload ruby native extensions to fasttrack, to avoid confusion, we now upload those also to -backports-staging. So all packages that cannot be in -backports either due to policy or due to the maintainers not wanting to support backports, we now upload to backports-staging.

Like official backports, fasttrack.debian.net is also not a stand alone suite.

stable < stable-backports < stable-backports-staging < stable-fasttrack

Packages in stable-backports-staging can depend on packages in stable-backports and packages in stable-fasttrack can depend on packages in stable-backports-staging.

Sample changelog entries

trixie-fasttrack

gitlab (17.0.8-4~fto13+1) trixie-fasttrack; urgency=medium

 * Rebuild for trixie-fasttrack.

 -- Pirate Praveen <praveen@debian.org> 2025年7月30日 01:13:17 +0530

bookworm-fasttrack

gitlab (17.0.8-4~fto12+1) bookworm-fasttrack; urgency=medium

 * Rebuild for bookworm-fasttrack.

 -- Pirate Praveen <praveen@debian.org> 2024年10月30日 01:13:17 +0530

bullseye-fasttrack

gitlab (13.12.8+ds1-1~fto11+1) bullseye-fasttrack; urgency=medium

 * Rebuild for bullseye-fasttrack.

 -- Pirate Praveen <praveen@debian.org> 2021年7月08日 22:56:17 +0530

Since we started including newer ruby and ruby native libraries in fasttrack, we are now changing +fto suffix to ~fto.

Packages temporarily blocked from official backports (backports-staging)

We have a suite for temporarily uploading packages that otherwise qualify backports criteria but we want in backports before it hits testing (transitions, freeze, backports-new or NEW blocking security update of a package in fasttrack).

Note: To avoid confusion with official backports, we are using -backports-staging suffix from bullseye. 

ruby-snowplow-tracker (0.8.0-1~bpo13+1) trixie-backports-staging; urgency=medium

 * Rebuild for trixie-backports-staging.

 -- Pirate Praveen <praveen@debian.org> 2025年3月17日 00:03:57 +0530

ruby-snowplow-tracker (0.8.0-1~bpo12+1) bookworm-backports-staging; urgency=medium

 * Rebuild for bookworm-backports-staging.

 -- Pirate Praveen <praveen@debian.org> 2023年3月17日 00:03:57 +0530

ruby-marcel (1.0.1+dfsg-1~bpo11+1) bullseye-backports-staging; urgency=medium

 * Rebuild for bullseye-backports-staging.

 -- Pirate Praveen <praveen@debian.org> 2021年5月10日 15:26:41 +0530

Since many dependencies are only relevant for packages in -fasttrack, we relax this rule to upload packages that qualifies for official backports to be uploaded there to avoid extra maintenance work (as we have to upload anyway to -backports-staging to avoid backports-new delay). If a backported package is useful outside -fasttrack it is recommended to upload it to official -backports.

Building packages for fasttrack

trixie-fasttrack

  1. Create trixie-fasttrack branch from the last release tag (Example: git checkout -b trixie-fasttrack debian/1.1.2-1. Use git log for finding last uploaded tag).
  2. Add new changelog entry: run dch --bpo and modify version s/~bpo13/~fto13/ and s/trixie-backports/trixie-fasttrack/)
  3. Add tag gbp tag --debian-branch=trixie-fasttrack
  4. Sample sbuild command for building packages targetting fasttrack (you will have to install fasttrack-archive-keyring package). 

sbuild -A -s --force-orig-source -c trixie-amd64-sbuild \
--extra-repository='deb http://deb.debian.org/debian trixie-backports main' \
--extra-repository='deb http://fasttrack.debian.net/debian trixie-backports-staging main' \
--extra-repository='deb http://fasttrack.debian.net/debian trixie-fasttrack main' \
--extra-repository-key=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/fasttrack-archive-keyring.gpg \
--build-dep-resolver=aspcud -d trixie-fasttrack --no-run-lintian "$@"

bookworm-fasttrack

  1. Create bookworm-fasttrack branch from the last release tag (Example: git checkout -b bookworm-fasttrack debian/1.1.2-1. Use git log for finding last uploaded tag).
  2. Add new changelog entry: run dch --bpo and modify version s/~bpo12/~fto12/ and s/bookworm-backports/bookworm-fasttrack/)
  3. Add tag gbp tag --debian-branch=bookworm-fasttrack
  4. Sample sbuild command for building packages targetting fasttrack (you will have to install fasttrack-archive-keyring package). 

sbuild -A -s --force-orig-source -c bookworm-amd64-sbuild \
--extra-repository='deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main' \
--extra-repository='deb http://fasttrack.debian.net/debian bookworm-backports-staging main' \
--extra-repository='deb http://fasttrack.debian.net/debian bookworm-fasttrack main' \
--extra-repository-key=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/fasttrack-archive-keyring.gpg \
--build-dep-resolver=aspcud -d bookworm-fasttrack --no-run-lintian "$@"

bullseye-fasttrack

  1. Create bullseye-fasttrack branch from the last release tag (Example: git checkout -b bullseye-fasttrack debian/1.1.2-1. Use git log for finding last uploaded tag).
  2. Add new changelog entry: run dch --bpo and modify version s/~bpo11/~fto11/ and s/bullseye-backports/bullseye-fasttrack/)
  3. Add tag gbp tag --debian-branch=bullseye-fasttrack
  4. Sample sbuild command for building packages targetting fasttrack (you will have to install fasttrack-archive-keyring package). 

sbuild -A -s --force-orig-source -c bullseye-amd64-sbuild \
--extra-repository='deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye-backports main' \
--extra-repository='deb http://fasttrack.debian.net/debian bullseye-backports-staging main' \
--extra-repository='deb http://fasttrack.debian.net/debian bullseye-fasttrack main' \
--extra-repository-key=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/fasttrack-archive-keyring.gpg \
--build-dep-resolver=aspcud -d bullseye-fasttrack --no-run-lintian "$@"

Uploading to Fast Track

Add this to your ~/.dput.cf 

[fasttrack]
fqdn = fasttrack.debian.net
incoming = /pub/UploadQueue/
login = anonymous
allow_dcut = 1
method = ftp
# Please, upload your package to the proper archive
# http://fasttrack.debian.net
allowed_distributions = (?!UNRELEASED|.*-security)

You can request upload access by opening an issue at https://salsa.debian.org/fasttrack-team/support/-/issues 

$ dput fasttrack gitlab_11.11.8+dfsg-1~fto10+1_amd64.changes

Note: Source only uploads are not supported at this time. Help is welcome to setup a buildd instance.

You can see the ?UploadQueue at ftp://fasttrack.debian.net/pub/UploadQueue/

You can see the NEW Queue at https://fasttrack.debian.net/fasttrack-new.html

Note: Recent browsers don't support ftp natively, so you can use a web based client like https://ftpweb.net/ (use anonymous as username and leave password blank)

See FastTrack/Buster for buster specific instructions.

Contact FastTrack Team

Contact fasttrack team via matrix/irc or opening salsa issues as mentioned at https://fasttrack.debian.net/#Contribute or write an email to team at fasttrack.debian.net

For FastTrack Admins

See FastTrack/Admins

CategorySystemAdministration | CategoryPackageManagement | CategorySoftware | CategoryPackaging

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