potential damage to Debian "stable" when installing packages from "testing"

[Martin T <m4rtntns@gmail.com>]

Hi,

let's say that I need a package named "weechat"(version 1.6-1) from
Debian "testing":

# apt-get install -t testing weechat
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  binutils libc-bin libc-dev-bin libc-l10n libc6 libc6-dev libgcrypt20
libgnutls30 libhogweed4 libncurses5 libn
  weechat-curses
Suggested packages:
  binutils-doc glibc-doc rng-tools gnutls-bin weechat-doc
Recommended packages:
  manpages-dev weechat-plugins
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libc-l10n libgnutls30 libhogweed4 libnettle6
The following packages will be upgraded:
  binutils libc-bin libc-dev-bin libc6 libc6-dev libgcrypt20
libncurses5 libncursesw5 libp11-kit0 libtasn1-6 li
16 upgraded, 4 newly installed, 0 to remove and 511 not upgraded.
Need to get 18.7 MB of archives.
After this operation, 8,111 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.
#

I guess one should not worry about new packages? However, as seen
above, such operation would upgrade some packages which are
dependencies for many other packages. For example libc6, libgcrypt20
or libncurses5. What are the consequences with that? I would guess it
shouldn't cause problems because (usually) dependencies require
version x OR higher. For example libc6 (>= 2.14) or libgcrypt20 (>=
1.6.1).



thanks,
Martin