searchgeo searched the Geocrawler.com mailing lists.  It's been
broken for a while apparently and I didn't notice or hear about
the breakage.  It's been removed but I can have a look at fixing
it if anyone is interested.

lynx is the recommended browser for the scripts.  The output
can sometimes look  crappy in other browsers.  If lynx isn't
your normal default you can set it for just these scripts with
the SSBROWSER environment variable.


ppack

    -D|R
    ----
    The -D and -R options showing the depends/reverse depends
    trees are a gimmick really.  -D uses "apt-cache depends"
    output and if there are alternatives, takes the last one.
    Also if it depends on a virtual package, just the virtual
    package name is printed rather than picking a package that
    provides it.

    For example, debhelper:

          debhelper's Depends line:
            Depends: perl5 | perl (>= 5.004), fileutils (>= 4.0-2.1), \
                         file (>= 3.23-1), dpkg-dev (>= 1.7.0), lynx

          $ apt-cache depends debhelper
             |Depends: <perl5>
                perl-5.005
                perl-5.6
                perl-5.004
              Depends: perl
              Depends: fileutils
              Depends: file
              Depends: dpkg-dev
              Depends: lynx
                lynx-ssl

          $ ppack -D debhelper 1
             |- dpkg-dev
             |- file
             |- fileutils
             |- lynx
             |- perl

    It was easy to implement this way and it's not clear if much
    is gained by following the first alternative instead, or by
    following all alternatives, which would be easy to do as
    well.  The same for picking a package that provides for the
    virtual package instead of just printing the virtual package
    name.

    If you've installed a package since your last update, this
    will run about 5x faster if you "apt-get update" first.

    -ch
    ---
    This compares the package names in the current Packages files in
    /var/state/apt/lists against a list of packages from the previous
    Packages files for a distribution, showing which packages were
    added and removed.

    This is probably most useful when run once a day after root
    runs "apt-get update".

    "ppack -P '?'" gives an explanation of selecting patterns to key
    on different distros.  Assuming you track unstable, the APT-0.4
    packages at klecker.debian.org/~jgg, testing & progeny this
    wrapper would work,

            #!/bin/sh
            for i in unstable testing jgg progeny _stable
            do
                /usr/bin/ppack -ch $i
            done

    The save names (in ~/.changed-pkgs/) are created from the
    arguments so you'll want to pick unique strings for the
    Packages files you want to track and stick with them.


APT
---
  ppack is most useful with APT >= 0.4.  This APT allows you
  to pin distributions / releases so that you can have their
  Packages files but not have to worry about having an unwanted
  package installed during upgrade.  If you run testing the
  following would allow you to track unstable as well:

  /etc/apt/sources.list
  ---------------------
  deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
  deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free

  /etc/apt/preferences
  --------------------
    Package: *
    Pin: release a=testing
    Pin-Priority: 998

    Package: *
    Pin: release a=unstable
    Pin-Priority: -1

  You'll want to set PPDIST='unstable apt' or so and override that
  on the command line when desired.

  You can see what's newer than your installed testing versions with
    ppack -u unstable

  And this would install deborphan from unstable:
    apt-get install deborphan/unstable



Rick Younie <younie@debian.org>
Oct 2001


vim:et
