quick question: how do you keep up with slackware-current? Do you download the packages and run upgradepkg or something else?

Yes, or use a program that will do that automatically for you.

Search these threads for either swaret, or slapt-get

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...82#post1614982
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ghlight=swaret

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...der=descending

Lots of people use Swaret . There is also a GUI called QtSwaret

Or just rsync, read changelong, and then installpkg.

I don't like swaret or apt-get at all.

Awesome. I only knew about swaret so you even informed others along with the creator

Also to those who hate GUIs and prefer the console. Its not like I don't use the console I just prefer a GUI when possible cause you can work faster with them usually. Its hard to benchmark that sort of thing ;-)

you left out the best one, well sorta, sombody mentioned apt-get but what he really meant was slapt-get. If I were you I wouldnt touch swaret with a 10-foot pole. Unlike the other 3rd party package managers, slapt-get has actually been adopted as the official manager for Vectorlinux which is basically a mepis-like distro but based on slackware instead of debian.

Oh and there is also a GUI for slapt-get called Gslapt, but I cant comment on that since ive never had the need to use it, I perfer CLI for my package management.

Why doesn't anyone mention slackpkg ? (in /extra)

Does slapt-get actually have automatic package updating? or do i have to manually update each and every package in my Slack?

EDIT:
Swaret is good, it all depends on how you use the updaters, and if you know wtf you're doing.. I could comment on slapt-get the same way they did on swaret a few posts back and say it'll destroy my system and ruin my kernel, but that's because i dont know how to use it..

Stick to what you like..

edit: thanks SiegeX, i meant to say slapt-get. fixed

elyk,

Regardless of how you choose to update, make sure you *read* the ChangeLog - Slackware is not designed to be blindly upgraded; issues will crop up with upgrades, and Pat makes these clear in the ChangeLog (e.g. the change from X.Org 6.7 to 6.8 caused a lot of keyboard trouble with people who upgraded and didn't bother to read the ChangeLog) and may offer advice on how to deal with these.

Perhaps because slackpkg, while useful for tracking current or installing official patches, is useful ONLY for doing that. Whereas other tools can do that and more, e.g. download from unofficial repositories, perform some kind of dependency resolution, etc.

Hi,
I tried with global 'http_proxy=", etc. env variables but can't connect to web using Qtswaret....
I am behind proxy that requires authentication...
Any idea?

Thanks.
Nirav

Fortunatly I wrote a fairly decent bash script called slapt_update which does this (also listed in the slapt-get FAQ). If you put it in your /etc/cron.daily folder then every night at ~4am it will run to see if there are any new packages for you to update, if so it ill email you letting you know and include a list of packages to be removed,upgraded,installed. Note that the removed part only pertains if you are tracking current. It also has the option to send the data to STDOUT incase you wanted to pipe it elsewhere, and if you have a cellphone you can just put the email address of your cell phone and it will send you a text message . I don't allow the script to automatically install the packages for you as thats generally a bad idea, but it does have the options to download the files so that they are already there when it comes time to install, and a simple slapt-get --upgrade should do the trick.

"Perhaps because slackpkg, while useful for tracking current or installing official patches, is useful ONLY for doing that. Whereas other tools can do that and more, e.g. download from unofficial repositories, perform some kind of dependency resolution, etc."

Well said, and id also like to mention that for official packages I find the slapt-get interface a bit more intuitive, but that part is objective.

Good call and extremely important, this reason if often where the FUD about slapt-get breaking boxes stems from.

I would have to disagree with you when talking about *official* packages, and that designation is important. Many people don't know that for official packages slapt-get doesnt do any dependancy resolution at all, which is a good thing as there is zero dependancy data for official slackware packages. For official slackware packages slapt-get is merely just a nice automated front end to pkgtools, and AFAIK you *shouldn't* be able to b0rk your box via installing *official* packages with the caveat of reading the changelog of course. For 3rd party packages, slapt-get has its own dependancy metadata format and many packages (and all the ones on vectorlinux) use this. But when dealing with 3rd party packages you are at the mercy of the packager and there are no guarantees.

Instead of just waving my hands and saying "swaret is bad (tm)" Ill repost something I put in another thread about 2months ago regarding why I believe this to be so.

I use slap-get.. seems to work pretty well for me.. haven't had any trouble yet.. however, I do have a question for others using slapt-get to stay current..

I was using slapt-get --upgrade to stay current.. but I read in another thread that you should run something like slapt-get -distro --upgrade or something along that line... I couldn't quite figure out what the difference was..

yes, when tracking -current you should run 'slapt-get --dist-upgrade' (my script does this btw to determine packages if you say yes to tracking -current). From the man page:

I highly suggest you read the slapt-get FAQ , its probably one of the better ones ive seen, chalk full of usefull info.

SiegeX,
hmm...sounds like slapt-get does by default
what i have been configuring swaret to do.
(minus your dep issue) Additionally, the script
you speak of sounds very nice.

I'm sold...will try to transition over in the near future.