Downgrade installed software to the versions available remotely?

On Tue, Jan 21, 2014 at 03:01:04PM +0100, name at domain wrote:

> A few months ago, I tried to use the GNU PPA,[1] but found that it

I don't trust PPAs.

> broke my packages, so I removed it.

You didn't use ppa-purge, which is commonly used in ubuntu, don't know about trisquel.

> Just today, I found that I
> actually have software updated from that repository still causing
> breakage.

apt will never downgrade a package, it doesn't have that feature!

SNIP

> files, which I need to compile something. Other than uninstalling
> and then reinstalling, because a lot of packages depend on this one,
> is there a way I can get this package (or better, all packages) to
> downgrade to whatever the highest version currently available
> remotely is?

IF, ppa-purge is available - you could re-add the PPA then remove it using ppa-purge, to get back all packages to the default repos version.

IF NOT, then no.

Good luck.

From the Synaptic Package Manager you can easily force the version of a given package (Ctrl+E or from the menu after selecting it).