swaret or slackpkg ?
 

Hello

I'm searching for THE tool to upgrade my slack.
swaret was included in slack 9.1 (extra) and slack-pkg is included in current.
Swaret has been removed from current/extra...

Swaret seems to be a good tool, with more usefull feature than slack-pkg...

Is there a reason why Pat removed that tool ?
It doesn't seem to be deprecated !

Fred

Yes, why?
Did swaret cause too much trouble?

gargamel

The ChangeLog doesn't say anything about removing swaret, which is a bit odd.

Anyway, as to THE tool to upgrade Slack: I haven't tried slackpkg, but I'm a big fan of swaret - working like a charm :)

If you search the board, this has been discussed. Swaret was also suspended from freshmeat (?) for a time. That was a about the same time Pat dropped it from current so one would assume..... It had to do with a lot of immature behavior by the developer and some of his minions.

I recommed updating with the current changelog, wget and upgradepkg. Look at the board at all the problems people report with swaret. I think most of the time it is user error because they don't understand what swaret is doing and what needs to be done.

Here, here! SWareT's not a bad tool if you use it correctly. Check the Slackware ChangeLog before upgrading with SWareT and you can see what you need upgraded, what you can ignore, and what special steps you might need to take before/after upgrading. SWareT is nice, but I recommend not doing below

I personally use slapt-get to keep up to date with -current, but heed ringwraith's words. My typical upgrade procedure is as follows:

1) Check the ChangeLog on Slackware.com. Note any packages removed, retired to /pasture, or added. Also a good place for the latest news on future plans for the distribution including releases, etc.

2) Run slapt-get --update && slapt-get --upgrade to upgrade to new versions of packages.

3) Run removepkg on any removed/retired packages.

4) Run slapt-get --install on any new packages that I want.

5) cd /etc && find . -name "*.new" and merge in any appropriate changes.

6) Test things out to make sure it all works.

Skip one of those steps and you're asking for trouble. Sometimes packages are split up, or combined, or new required libraries are added (especially during major upgrades to GNOME) and unless you add these packages your software will not run properly.

I for one do swaret --update and swaret --upgrade, usually answering to upgrade [A]ll. (I've never dared use the -a option when I upgrade, though.) And every once in a while I do a swaret --dep. No problems whatsoever. I've even managed to root out Dropline twice using only swaret (somewhat assisted by removepkg on one occasion).

I also always switch to init 3 before upgrading stuff like X, GTK, KDE, Gnome, ... I do it exactly like Toth, except that I use Swaret. The only thing that bothers me about Swaret is that it is so slow at listing upgradeable packages. But I still use it because slapt-get --upgrade isn't as verbose as swaret --upgrade.

Regarding slapt-get and verboseness...
 

slapt-get has the -S (--show-stats) option that "will show curl style
download information." (FAQ) ... dunno if that's what swaret does (never used it).

Just a note for first time slapt-get --upgrade runs (like mine this week). If you run via
sudo'd user be sure /sbin in in that user's $PATH -
else the subsequent updatepkg et. al. will fail,
forcing manual updates of all (yes I learned this the hard way though it's in the FAQ :rolleyes: )