Ok, I'm lame. RTFM. :study: The Slackbook is advertised as having a whole chapter (18) on package management and SlackBuild scripts.

Slackware store here i come.

If I do that I'll obviously have to use -Current mirrors for Slackpkg. After it goes Stable would I have to switch to a stable mirror manually? Actually, when it is officially released, how do you switch to Stable? I've seen documentation on upgrading but never for going from Current to Stable.

Yes that is correct.

Once -current goes stable simple edit /etc/slackpkg/mirrors and point it at the now stable 13.37 branch.
You'll see that the mirror list has already been updated in anticipation. Do be vary careful to use the correct "ARCH" though, things get messy when you point a 64bit install at a 32bit mirror etc..

Well I already installed 13.1 last night but thought about upgrading to -Current. I've already read instructions on how to do it, and I read that I should uncomment all blacklisted packages before I do so. If I understand things correctly, packages are blacklisted to avoid system breakage. I imagine that I shouldn't blacklist anything when I run Current but I probably should when I switch to 13.37 when it officially releases. Will there be any documentation with the system or anywhere that recommends which packages should be blacklisted at that time?

Just blacklist "aaa_elflibs" as once you are running stable, that package should not be upgraded (unless you start tracking -current again).

You can add any of your own custom packages (you may have recompiled or upgraded yourself) things built from SBo etc...

The default slackpkg blacklist should be up to date and ready to go so maybe the last thing you can do once stable is declared is reinstall slackpkg, choose to overwrite the existing configs with the *.new ones and uncomment your preferred mirror.

After that just blacklist anything you need to as mentioned above.

Edit: I see you mention Linuxpackages.net.
My advice would be to use Slackbuilds.org and perhaps even sbopkg. Better to compile the applications on your machine rather than trusting pre-compiled packages.

Okay, so nothing blacklisted until 13.37 goes Stable, and once that happens, re-install slackpkg and overwrite everything, then I'm good. Alright, thanks.

Nope, I have sbopkg. The only pre-compiled packages I've grabbed have been from Alien Bob's site.

Should be all good then =)

I've read somewhere that even in -current, aaa_elflibs should not be upgraded. For example, if use -current and wish to NOT upgrade the aaa_elflibs, is there a chance that I will have a problem later on due to not upgrading it? Or do I need to upgrade it sometime?

I think that if you do upgrade the entire OS you will probably not gain or lose anything at all by upgrading the aaa_elflibs.
Personally I do upgrade it in the very last stages of current development (for completeness sake) but after reading what Mozes has written there it would appear it's not really necessary.

I'm more than happy to be corrected here and would defer to what Pat and Mozes say on the matter.

jrecortel --

Thanks for that link ( http://connie.slackware.com/~mozes/docs/aaa_elflibs.txt ) !

Gotta go look around for more 'good stuff' out there.

mRgOBLIN --

eek ! I hope so ! I have been done `upgradepkg` on aaa_elflibs maybe 5-times since I first installed -current

Not to mention that I run Eric's multilib where I have done 3-or-more `upgradepkg` sessions ...

Anyone know what's the real word ?

Thanks.

-- kjh

Package Management : Probably the most often answered question on the Slackware Forum. There is an excellent package management tool pkgtool, whcih requires a minimal amount of CLI competance to use. It does what all tools do (install, remove, upgrade) Slackware packages. The only thing that it does not do is to try and keep track of dependencies - that is firmly up to the user. As a result Slackers tend to know / find out pretty quickly what they need to have on their systems to install software they need in addition to what is supplied with the releases.

As regards a repository, there is no official one, but various unofficial sites exist which offer binary packages. Most people however seem to use (Slackbuilds). This site provides version-sensitive Slackware-compatible buildscripts which you can use to build packages from source. Thre are links pointing to the sites which have the sources. There is also a very good command line tool called sbopkg which communicates with the Slackbuilds site, downloads what you need and does the building (NB still no dependency management!).

Hoope that helps

...

SlackBuilds.org has already been mentioned and is the first place I look, but there are two other places I look before I would go to linuxpackages: Eric Hameleers's slackbuild site and Slacky.eu (the Italian Slackware Community site; some basic familiarity with Italian is useful but not necessary). These both have compiled packages, but still make slackbuilds available for everything. This last point is where LP is most lacking: slackbuilds are only optionally included, and will probably only work on the Slackware version they were compiled for.

Oh, yeah, here at LinuxQuestions, there's a wiki that includes this:

Slackware Links: Builds, Packages, and Scripts