Comments on pkgwatch -- A Package Management Wrapper
pkgwatch -- A Package Management Wrapper In the past I was trying many different linux distros. Each has its own package management systems: debian has apt, mandrake has urpmi, yellowdog has an apt front-end for rpm, suse has yast... While they all are quite similar and not difficult to use, I found that I often made mistakes because I often forgot which system I was using and the exact commands on that system. Another issue is that I wish I could keep track how I installed/removed those packages. So I wrote a simple wrapper for various package management systems.
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Comments
This is a welcome addition.
One small suggestion for aptitude: disk space is cheap. Therefore I always use:
aptitude --with-recommends [install|safe-upgrade|full-upgrade]
yes it's perhaps desirable to do so (you can look into pkgwatch and change it to your taste). I am just an old time freak who would like to keep my systems clean and small, which makes little sense today.
Don't forget pacman, the Archlinux package manager, which uses .tar.gz packets.
update database and install all updates:
$ pacman -Syu
install one package from the online server:
$ pacman -S package_name
install one local package:
$ pacman -U /path/to/package.tar.gz
etc...
Hi,
if I happen to use arch linux, the first thing I would do after installing the OS is to add support for pacman to pkgwatch, which I expect to be quick. As said, the scripts are really simple and far from complete or bug-free. I just use it regularly and find it useful, hence would like to share it. Anyone with little familiarity with shell scripting can adapt the scripts to his taste.
I hope this will provide some convergence
Some back-ends are out-of-date, since I don't use the underlying system anymore: urpmi, yast, or yum.
So then why not use something that is kept up-to-date, such as PackageKit?
Hi,
because I got stuck with those pkg-* commands and I am too lazy to switch to something else :). Besides that, I prefer the simplicity of pkgwatch over any GUI tools. This is purely a personal preference.
All hail Tony.
I have dreamed about something like this.
I hope your work will inspire others to improve the wrapper.
Sam
PS. Why not simply use install command? A lot easier to remember.
Hi,
just install <something> would be too simple and can be confused with other commands. Hence I chose to add the pkg- prefix, to make clear that we are dealing with packages. Hope it makes sense.
Why not publish this to github?
Update: I created a github project pw to continue this project. These days I use mostly apt, zypper and homebrew, however it's rather trivial to add support for another package manager. Just make a PR. --Tony