Advanced Packaging Tool Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Advanced Packaging Tool, or APT, is a package management system created by the Debian project. APT greatly simplifies the process of installing and removing software on Unix systems.
There is no apt program per se; APT is a C++ library of functions that are used by several command line programs for dealing with packages, most notably apt-get and apt-cache.
There are also programs that provide a front end to APT, usually based on apt-get, such as aptitude, with an ncurses text interface, and Synaptic, with a GTK+ graphical user interface.
There is a central of over 13000 apt packages used by apt-get and derived programs to download and install applications directly from the Internet, often hailed as one of Debian's best features.
APT was originally designed to work with .deb packages on Debian systems, but it has since been modified to work with RPM packages via apt4rpm, and to run on other operating systems such as Mac OS X — see fink.
The idea in APT is that once package repository has been specified during the system installation, packages can be installed without specifying location. APT also handles dependencies automatically.
For example, this is output when installing the Galeon Web browser:
# apt-get install galeon Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done The following extra packages will be installed: capplets capplets-data desktop-base galeon-common gnome-control-center gnome-session libeel2-2 libgnome-desktop-2 libnautilus2-2 Suggested packages: esound-clients gnome kde wmaker gtm gnome-core gnome-audio Recommended packages: epiphany-browser mozilla-mailnews The following NEW packages will be installed: capplets capplets-data desktop-base galeon galeon-common gnome-control-center gnome-session libeel2-2 libgnome-desktop-2 libnautilus2-2 0 upgraded, 10 newly installed, 0 to remove and 21 not upgraded. Need to get 7050kB of archives. After unpacking 19.5MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue? [Y/n]APT automatically detects the required missing packages, and will install those automatically. It also shows recommended and suggested packages, summarising which new packages will be installed and how much space they will take up after install.
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2 Apt-get moo 3 See also |
Apt-pinning is a process whereby the user can instruct Debian GNU/Linux's version of APT to grab particular packages from different distributions, using it with more than two of the Debian release sources: stable, testing, and unstable. In order to do this, the pins in the /etc/apt/preferences file must be modified. [1]
Apt-get also says something interesting if
This is an Article on Advanced Packaging Tool. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Advanced Packaging Tool Apt-pinning
Apt-get moo
apt-get moo is run:# apt-get moo
(__)
(oo)
/------\\/
/ | ||
* /\\---/\\
~~ ~~
...."Have you mooed today?"...See also
dpkg, which APT uses to actually install and remove Debian packages