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newsNeoAPT simplified replacement for apt utility
The question came up in this forum thread:
https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?t=14004
It is a convenience to run the 'apt' or 'apt-get' utilities in a terminal, to perform various package-management functions. One of those conveniences is to specify multiple packages to be installed.
EasyOS has a package management system that is different from Debian. PKGget, the EasyOS GUI program, can, in the case of Easy Daedalus, install from the Devuan/Debian package respositories. However, the package database format is different from that of Devuan/Debian, which means that the 'apt' utility won't work.
There are some Puppy distros that attempt to get 'apt' to work with the Puppy Package Manager (PPM), but it is a hack.
Another approach is to write a replacement for 'apt', that is just a wrapper for PKGget. I have got the ball rolling, to show how this works. There is a new directory, /usr/local/neo-apt, for now with a simple 'apt' script that only implements the "install" commandline option:
What it does is call PKGget for each of the packages specified on the commandline. So for the first one, PKGget will run:
Which is a good thing, to have the GUI present you with all the required dependencies, rather than just blindly going ahead and installing a gazillion packages.
This is just a start; we could add "search", "update", "list", etc.
Note, this NeoAPT will work in Easy Scarthgap also. It has nothing to do with Debian package DBs, it is just a wrapper for PKGget.
Here are the github commits:
https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/215a7417e87e8d4d0ce9593c9ca409715976f1de
https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/5f6ac2782d43cbd92d88d1bf6b0fd72d044cf2a4
https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/ea6241621a38cd9259b138865b9d3d4bbff91a19
As apt and related packages do not work in Easy Daedalus, have blacklisted them:
https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/5a08374e6fa9d437ff925f34c9fc8c941068a2ff
Changing the subject, I have added some 'gvfs' packages to Easy Daedalus, as it seems needed by some filemanagers:
https://github.com/bkauler/woofq/commit/f11ede856b3405d580f0980403b92696cca2ec85
EDIT 2025-03-17:
Decided to change the name, from NeoAPT to EasyAPT.
Tags: easy