At these pages an attempt is made to introduce the Advanced Package Tool (APT), originally developed for the Debian Linux distribution, to users of rpm based Linux systems. The intention is to explain how to integrate/implement apt on an rpm based system. For the details about the usage of apt itself one is referred to the apt documentation, manual, howto, etc. References to it can be found here.
APT has been ported from Debian to the rpm based distribution of Conectiva. After the port completed succesfully, Conectiva now uses APT as package management in their distribution. So why is apt4rpm still needed, you may ask? It's not needed anymore for the Conectiva distribution, but for all the other rpm based distributions. Apt needs a defined package repository to work from, and if the distribution you're using does not set up the APT repository on their CD's, or download servers you must create the repository yourself. This is where apt4rpm comes to rescue!
Apt4rpm brings the following features:
28 Februari 2005: a new version (0.69.3) has been released. The new version can be obtained from its usual location. Read the news file to obtain information about the latest changes.
05 October 2004: a new version (0.69.0) has been released. The new version can be obtained from its usual location. Among other things the performance and locking mechanism has been improved, support for metadata repositories has been added.
20 May 2004: a new version (0.68.2) has been released. The new version can be obtained from its usual location. Among other things support for yum has been added.
25 Januari 2004: a new version (0.67.0) has been released. The new version can be obtained from its usual location. 2 configuration options has been added.
30 December 2003: a new version (0.66.0) has been released. The new version can be obtained from its usual location.
21 November 2003: Dear apt4rpm users it has been a long time since the last update, but a new version (0.65.3) has been developed and released. The new version can be downloaded from here.
31 August 2003: version 0.65.2 has been released. the new version can be downloaded from here.
08 May 2003: a new version (0.64.4) has been released. Another release to squash even more bugs. As usual the release notes can be found here and the new version can be retrieved from here.
12 April 2003: a new version (0.64.3) has been released. It's a maintenance release. As usual the release notes can be found here and the new version can be retrieved from here.
16 March 2003: a new version (0.64.2) has been released. It's a maintenance release. As usual the release notes can be found here and the new version can be retrieved from here.
01 Februari 2003: 2 new apt repositories/servers have been added to the repository page.
01 Februari 2003: a new version (0.64.1) has been released. It's something between a maintenance - and a feature release -> according the open source thought: release early and often. The code has been _prepared_ to write an apt repository to cmpact disk. Still some major work must be done to get this accomplished though. As usual the release notes can be found here and the new version can be retrieved from here.
21 Januari 2003: a new version (0.64) is available. This time providing a feature that allows flexible archive naming schemes some bugs have been fixed. The release notes can be found here and the new version can be retrieved from here.
03 Januari 2003: a new version (0.63.2) is available. No new features; the release notes can be found here and the new version can be retrieved from here.
30 December 2002: a new version (0.63.1) is available. Same story as the previous release (dated 21 December 2002).
21 December 2002: a new version (0.63) is available. It is a maintenance release, preparing apt4rpm for the future. On the fly some bugs has been fixed too. There are no backwards incompatibilities. It can be obtained from the Sourceforge download page.
16 December 2002: Finally the new version (0.62) has been released. It is available from the (Sourceforge) download page. Be carefull with installing as the current version is not backwards compatible, more about it in the NEWS file that is included in the package. At least make a backup of your current configuration file.
25 November 2002: The cvs version of apt4rpm has been merged from the libxml2_branch back to head :) Aptate contains code to even further fine graine the information in the cache. The rpm name, version and architecture are now all stored in seperate fields. This makes it possible to easily search through all component caches for 1 particular rpm. Aptate itself uses this information to make lists that provides the "most recent rpm" in a component. This may come in handy for autoinstallation applications, that want to install the most recent rpms.
05 November 2002: The cvs version of apt4rpm is now storing
the date when an rpm has been added to the apt repository. This
information can be used to create webpages to publish when and which
rpms have been added to the apt repository in the last X number of days
for example.
Is there anybody out there that wants to create the scripts to make
these web pages???
29 October 2002: The current version of apt4rpm in cvs is
running fine at repository that provides over 15000 rpms for 3
different distro versions. So it is save to checkout the
development version in cvs (libxml2_branch! =
cvs co -r libxml2_branch apt4rpm) and have it run at your site.
Things to be done for releasing is to finish the 0.50 to 0.60 config
file convert tool and to move the development branch back to HEAD.
22 September 2002: Development of the next release entered a new phase: writing documentation. Aptate's configuration file (defined by the dtd) should now be stable. You may try the cvs version if you're adventurous (make sure to take the libxml2_branch (cvs co -r libxml2_branch)). The only thing is that the old config - and mirror file(s) must be converted into 1 config file. This can be done manually whereby the script aptate-convert can provide some assistance. Further more the location of the cache - and update directories have changed. This means that after installing the new version the cache will be recreated again. Or you should move the cache - and the update directory to the new location. They are now both located under <topdir>/aptate. At this link a description of the new configuration file can be found. Questions/feedback can be sent to the developers email list.
21 September 2002: Save a life (a sad intermezzo)
This is too sad to let unnoticed: You may already have read in the
newspaper that the Nigerian Amina Lawal has been sentenced by death,
because she gave birth to a child of a man to whom she is not married.
As soon as the child finishes breast feeding, Amina will be buried
up to her chest and stoned!
Amnesty International started a worldwide campaign against it. At
the link below, you'll find a petition that you could sign:
petition,
campaign information can be found
here.
30 August 2002: Distrowatch is now listing the rpm based distributions that provide native apt support.
27 August 2002: a little status update. A loonnnggg time has passed since the last release, it doesn't mean nothing is being done. On the contrary, a lot of work has been executed and as result of this (and as announced with the last release) the API has changed a lot and is still changing, but not so much anymore. In the development version of aptate the configuration file and the mirrorfile(s) have been merged into 1 configuration file. This means that the new version of aptate won't work without converting the config files into the new format....
The XML parser perl-XML-Simple has been put aside in favor of perl-XML-LibXML. The later provides bindings to the libxml2 library, providing a lot of advanced XML functionality. This functionality is used to drive aptate, to check the correctness of the configuration file, etc. If you want to prepare for the next release of aptate, install the perl module: perl-XML-LibXML and its dependend perl modules: perl-XML-SAX and perl-XML-NamespaceSupport.
24 July 2002: Again a new version (0.5.4-cnc2) of apt has been released. It can be downloaded from: http://moin.conectiva.com.br/ AptRpm
13 July 2002: A new snapshot version (0.5.4) of apt (the client) has become available (a major update compared to the old version (0.3.19)). This version provides a lot of new functionality, if you want to have the leatest and greatest APT features check it out at: http://moin.conectiva.com.br/AptRpm
18 June 2002: A new section called "client" has been added to the apt4rpm project. It provides 2 example scripts that helps to run configure scripts after apt-get upgraded packages and to fully automate package upgrading. The README file should explain it all... The scripts are located here.
14 June 2002: The new version 0.50 has been released. The rpm is available from the download page. Because much has been added and especially the flat repository functionality made us decide to bump up the version number. The flat repository structure has been made default. This means that your current noflat repository will be changed to a flat one. This is a transparent change for the server as well as the client! Further more the project obtained autoconf/configure support. For all the detailed changes have a look at the NEWS file by provided the rpm. We hope you enjoy this version of apt4rpm!
01 June 2002: Expect a new release soon. The new version will provide the "flat" apt repository model for source rpms. This means that the source and binary rpms are located at the same level. There are bug fixes and autoconf/configure support is now present.
21 May 2002: Our 2 headed development team has been extendend with 50% and we're now with 3 :) A warm welcome to Ralf Corsepius! Ralf provided the code for the flat apt repository model and autoconf support. If you feel that apt4rpm must be improved, join the team just as Ralf did!
19 May 2002: Version 0.20 of apt4rpm is now available. If you use apt4rpm/aptate, please update to this release! It contains some nice improvements. Among them a big resource and time saver for the client as well as the server. The patch prevents unnecessary downloads for the client, which is especially if the client is behind a slow link!
14 May 2002: Version 0.1.4 of apt4rpm has been released, check out via the download page. Any comments, patches, etc are welcomed!
13 May 2002: Did you already try the graphical frontend to apt
synaptic?
For SuSE users there is information about synaptic, in the hints
section at: here
RedHat users can download the synaptic rpms from
http://freshrpms.net.
21 April 2002: A new version (0.1.2) available at Sourceforge. It's a minor bug fix update, no need to update in case apt4rpm is working fine for you.
25 Mar 2002: This is a historical day for SuSE users, the first public apt repository suse has become available. Many thanks to Eberhard Moenkeberg of Gesellschaft fuer Wissenschaftliche Datenverarbeitung Goettingen (GWDG) who has been so kind to provide the repository. The repository is located at: ftp://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/linux/suse/apt/. To all SuSE users "have more fun" :)
24 Mar 2002: Anybody out there who wants to help to
adapt feta
(FrontEnd To Apt) from its Debian roots to rpm based systems?
It already works partly at rpm based systems but not straight
from the download. Feta merges all the apt (and dkpg/dselect/rpm)
commands into a single command, it's written in perl.
The author is looking forward to receive patches to support rpm's.
Ranging from a *.spec file, automatically detecting which package
system to use (deb/rpm), etc.
Another website related to feta can be found
here.
11 Mar 2002: A new version (0.1.1) available at Sourceforge. Fixed a problem when cutdirs = 0 in the mirrorfile. The manual has been updated a little bit as well.
05 Mar 2002: The initial apt4rpm release named apt4rpm-0.1.0 is now available for download at Sourceforge. We hope you enjoy using apt4rpm.
24 Feb 2002: The manual as currently present has been added to the links section at the homepage.
13 Feb 2002: The code has been frozen to prepare for our initial release. Expected 0.1.0 release within a week.
08 Feb 2002: Since today it is possible to download the the packages that are required by apt4rpm from 1 location. They are located in our download area at Sourceforge.
06 Feb 2002: A new public RedHat apt server has become on line this is the 3rd one available for RedHat.
02 Feb 2002: The initial code to let aptate work with an xml formatted config file has been checked in. It is a minor improvement compared to the xml format change for the mirror file, but it is a nice one.
21 Jan 2002: The initial code to let aptate work with an xml formatted mirrorfile has been checked in. You might want to check out this update, if you're using the mirror option of aptate, it's quite an improvement so to say :)
19 Jan 2002: Initial code has been checked in, to support XML formatted mirrorfiles. There is no integration with aptate yet, but this is about to be checked in. Another thing that is being worked on backstage, is a wrapper around rpm that will automatically restart services, call mk_initrd and lilo, etc.
01 Jan 2002: we wish all our visitors a Happy 2002. Hopefully apt will breakthrough at all rpm based systems!
10 Dec 2001: we're at the frontpage of slashdot today. The article has been titled "APT - With Your Favorite Distribution".
09 Dec 2001: all variables are now addressable via the command line, making aptate much more flexible in it's usage! The rpm spec files seems ready as well. The config files in $HOME are now relocated to $HOME/.aptate.
06 Dec 2001: it's a little quiet, however we're working to get the spec file in shape for making an rpm package. The first code lines to process command line arguments have been committed to cvs. The most often used variables and the configuration files can now be specified at the command line, making aptate much more flexible.
26 Nov 2001: it was a nice day today, I've just finished upgrading my system from SuSE-7.2 to release 7.3 using apt-get via an ftp server.
22 Nov 2001: it's a little quiet as we're investigating the best method for creating the apt source repository. While this is on going the security part of the code has been cleaned up (So there is fortenately still some good news to mention:).
19 Nov 2001: aptatemod has obtained support for short and long command line arguments. And it can now be run from the cron as an argument has been added to skip a question, that was always asked"
17 Nov 2001: the patch that makes it possible to have multiple distributions/versions/architectures in a single apt repository has been tested. The creation of the binary and source apt repository passed the test succesfully. However, it failed to retrieve the source packages (the retrieval of bin packages went just fine). Another fix is needed to make the retrieval of source packages possible.
15 Nov 2001: the patch that should allow multiple distributions/versions/architectures in a single apt repository is now available in cvs. It's being tested.
13 Nov 2001: we found a problem when supporting more than 1
distribution. This problem is currently being worked, and a hopefully
a fix will be available soon.
The website got a facelift :)
12 Nov 2001: just finished updating 370 rpm packages, including the kernel, via the "ftp:" method (before the "file:" method was used). In total 258 MB was downloaded.
09 Nov 2001: Good news, aptate has been succesfully tested on a bash version 1 system (being a RH-6.2 system)! The good mood is back :)
25 Oct 2001: The release mood has vanished. Aptate has been tested at a Redhat-6.2 system, mirroring many distro's. This test revealed that there are currently too many new bash functions used. The bash version at the above mentioned distro is 1.14, while we are running version 2.xx. We need to be patient a bit more :(
21 Oct 2001: We're in release mood! We're using aptate and apt at our own systems for keeping them up to date. The only things to be done before an official release announcement is writing documentation and the creation of tarballs/rpm packages. If you're brave and adventureous check out the cvs repository! If you want to wait for tarballs or rpm packages come back here so now and then or follow the release announcements at Freshmeat.