14 DAY TRIAL // APT (Advanced Package Tool) is a set of core tools inside Debian that allow users to install, remove, and keep applications up to date. A new version of APT is now out and brings even more improvements.
It's been around six months since APT (Advanced Package Tool) finally managed to get to the 1.0 version, after 16 years of development. The progress has been slow, but this particular package has landed in hundreds of Linux distributions from all around the world and it's one of the most used terminal commands.
Each new release gets a few more fixes or improvements, and it looks like the time of new features has passed already. The 1.0 release was quite interesting and it had a few new options, but now we settle only with regular updates.
Even if the APT tool is present in many – if not all – Debian-based distributions out there, a lot of them are using the old release, the one before the 1.0 branch was made available. It's unclear why that is happening, because the 1.x branch seems be stable enough. For example, Ubuntu uses the 1.0.9.1 release and the new syntanx is available, if you happen to know it.
A new APT (Advanced Package Tool) version is out
"Much of why Debian is a strong Linux distribution comes from the core of Debian namely its package management. Everything in Debian - every application, every component - everything - is built into a package, and then that package is installed onto your system (either by the Installer, or by you). There are over 29 thousand software packages available for Debian - everything from the Linux kernel to games."
"Apt, which basically resolves dependency problems and retrieves the requested packages, works with dpkg, another tool, which handles the actual installation and removal of packages (applications). Apt is very powerful, and is primarily used on the command line (console/terminal). There are, however, many GUI/Graphical tools to let you use Apt without having to touch the command line," say the developers.
The devs note that APT (Advanced Package Tool) 1.0.9.2 has closed a regression that affected the copy process, a security regression introduced in the previous release has been corrected, and hardening=+all has been added.
A complete list of modifications and updates can be found in the official changelog. You can download APT (Advanced Package Tool) 1.0.9.1 right now from Softpedia, but if you get the source package you won't be able to do much with it, unless you want to compile it yourself.
Ubuntu users can employ the new syntax available for APT. For example, to update the repos you will have to run with this command: