Cupt is a high-level package manager for Debian and Debian-derived OSes, with dpkg(1) as a back-end.
The aim of this manual is to describe the all features Cupt package manager has to manage the system, from the most basics to very advanced tuning. Please submit your proposals/patches when you see some use case is not covered.
This manual was written for the second major version of Cupt (2.x branch). Most of it is however applicable to first major version (1.x branch) too.
You might not want to use Cupt, because:
You might want to use Cupt to have these, to my best knowledge, unique features:
Also, one of Cupt's targets is to have zero non-wishlist bugs. You might want to try it if you encountered a bug in other package manager(s).
To start working with Cupt just install it using any present package manager,
for example apt-get install cupt or aptitude install cupt.
Cupt uses existing APT infrastructure for the work. It should be safe to co-use Cupt and any APT-based package managers.
Note: since version 2.1.0, Cupt uses its own directory for repository index
lists, so apt-get update, aptitude update etc. do not change Cupt index
data anymore.
When using commands that modify a system, you have to either execute cupt with
root priviledes or supply --simulate (or -s) option.
Use cupt help to get a list of subcommands and their short descriptions.
Cupt package manager sees the Debian system as a set of installed packages and repositories of available packages.
Each binary package has zero, one or more versions, of which zero or one versions may be installed.
Any installed package may be marked as automatically installed, it means that user didn't ask for this package to be installed, but it is needed to satisfy some dependency. Packages which are not automatically installed are manually installed.
Available versions (including installed one) of the binary package have unique version strings.
Cupt uses three types of output to user: information, warnings and errors.
All warning messages are prepended with W:. They mean non-critical errors,
which may be, depending on the situation, real errors or things to ignore.
All error messages are prepended with E:. Most of errors block the executing
of the program, but not all.
Errors and warnings are written to the standard error.
All other messages are the information for the user. They are written to standard output.
cupt pkgnames --installed-only
gives you the list, one package name per line. You can also use
dpkg -l | grep "^ii"
for more detailed information.
dpkg -s package_name
or
cupt show --installed-only package_name
A second command is preferrable, for example, when you want to know is this package automatically installed or not.
To show a default package version:
cupt show package_name
Example: cupt show dpkg
To show all available package versions:
cupt show --all-versions package_name
If you want to see a Debian changelog for a package, use the subcommand changelog.
Example: cupt changelog exim4
If you want to see a Debian copyright file a for a package, use the subcommand copyright.
Example: cupt copyright exim4
Note: Cupt can show changelogs and copyrights either for installed packages, or for packages available in official repositories in Debian or Ubuntu.
To search for a package, specify one or more regular expressions as arguments:
cupt search keyword1 keyword2 ... keywordN
Example: you want to find a Qt-based audio player:
cupt search audio qt player: found qmmp.
cupt search music qt player: found also amarok.
Another example: you want to find GTK+-related Perl modules:
cupt search --names-only "gtk.*perl"
To update repository medadata, use
cupt update
It's recommended to update metadata every time before you install or upgrade packages.
Note: Cupt downloads quite a many files to update repository metadata. Some files may be downloaded in 2-3 different ways (like indexes) or are not so important (like translations for package descriptions). You may see some warnings, but if you don't see an error message like
E: there were errors while downloading release and index data
, the process overall went fine. You can also check program exit code.
When some package is changing its state, Cupt calls the action:
An example of action preview prompt:
$ cupt install kdm akregator exim4 Building the package cache... Initializing package resolver and worker... Scheduling requested actions... Resolving possible unmet dependencies... The following 7 packages will be INSTALLED: exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light libgnutlsxx26 libntrack-qt4-1 libntrack0 The following 32 packages will be UPGRADED: akregator kde-window-manager kdebase-workspace-bin kdebase-workspace-data kdebase-workspace-kgreet-plugins kdm ksysguard ksysguardd libgnutls-dev libgnutls26 libkdecorations4 libkdepim4 libkephal4 libkscreensaver5 libksgrd4 libksignalplotter4 libkwineffects1a libkworkspace4 libpcre3 libplasma-geolocation-interface4 libplasmaclock4a libplasmagenericshell4 libprocesscore4a libprocessui4a libsolidcontrol4 libsolidcontrolifaces4 libsoup2.4-1 libtaskmanager4a libweather-ion4a plasma-dataengines-workspace plasma-desktop plasma-widgets-workspace The following 4 packages will be REMOVED: libgsasl7(a) libntlm0(a) msmtp(a) msmtp-mta Need to get 25.7MiB/83.4MiB of archives. After unpacking 3512KiB will be used. Do you want to continue? [y/N/q/a/?]
In the output above you can see: lists of packages to change the state (with a total number by each action, the total download amount of packages (83.4MiB), the download amount considering the cache of already downloaded archives (25.7MiB), an estimate of difference in disk usage after the actions (+3512KiB), a user prompt what to do.
For removed and purged packages, a suffix (a) is appended to a package name if a package was automatically installed.
The following answers to a user prompt are available:
To install a package:
cupt install package_name
Example: cupt install exim4
To install several packages:
cupt install package_name_1 package_name_2 ... package_name_N
Example: cupt install exim4 kvirc kdm
To upgrade one or more installed packages, use the same commands as for installing packages.
To remove a package:
cupt remove package_name
Example:
cupt remove gdb
To remove several packages:
cupt remove package_name_1 package_name_2 ... package_name_N
Example:
cupt remove gdb kvirc exim4
To upgrade as many packages as possible:
cupt full-upgrade
In the mode above, Cupt will even consider removing manually installed packages. If you want to restrict removing manually installed packages, do
cupt full-upgrade --no-remove
Or, shorter:
cupt safe-upgrade
There is the third upgrade mode, which is to be used for upgrades to the next major distribution releases:
cupt dist-upgrade
This subcommand upgrades Cupt itself and dpkg at first, and then calls new version of itself to upgrade the rest.
To purge a package, i.e. remove a package along with its configuration files and maybe some dynamically generated or runtime files:
cupt remove --purge package_name
Or:
cupt purge package_name
To purge several packages:
cupt purge package_name_1 package_name_2 ... package_name_N
Example:
cupt purge gdb
Whenever Cupt needs to install, upgrade or downgrade packages it downloads
binary package archives (.deb files) to an archive cache. These archives
are not removed after the first usage so they can be reused later.
If you do upgrades often, it's a good idea to periodically delete old package
archives to save the disk space. It's done by the subcommand autoclean:
cupt autoclean
The command above will delete all package archives which do not belong to currently available repositories.
If you want to remove all archives from the cache, do
cupt clean
Cupt uses the same repository list format as APT. See sources.list(5).
Each version of a certain package has one or more sources where it comes from.
Each source consists of download information and a subrepository information, or release information.
The following properties belong to release information:
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian
testing or stable
wheezy or sid
main or non-free
Debian
Debian-Security
6.0
Any of properties above may be empty.
To see available releases:
cupt policy
Example:
$ cupt policy
Package files:
/var/lib/dpkg/status installed/: o=dpkg,a=installed,l=,c=,v=,n=now
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian stable/main: o=Debian,a=stable,l=Debian,c=main,v=6.0,n=squeeze
http://security.debian.org stable/main: o=Debian,a=stable,l=Debian-Security,c=main,v=6.0,n=squeeze
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian squeeze-updates/main: o=Debian,a=squeeze-updates,l=Debian,c=main,v=,n=squeeze-updates
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian testing/main: o=Debian,a=testing,l=Debian,c=main,v=,n=wheezy
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian testing/contrib: o=Debian,a=testing,l=Debian,c=contrib,v=,n=wheezy
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian testing/non-free: o=Debian,a=testing,l=Debian,c=non-free,v=,n=wheezy
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian unstable/main: o=Debian,a=unstable,l=Debian,c=main,v=,n=sid
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian unstable/contrib: o=Debian,a=unstable,l=Debian,c=contrib,v=,n=sid
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian unstable/non-free: o=Debian,a=unstable,l=Debian,c=non-free,v=,n=sid
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian experimental/main: o=Debian,a=experimental,l=Debian,c=main,v=,n=experimental
The format of lines above:
basic_URI archive/component: o=vendor,a=archive,l=label,c=component,v=version,n=codename
Note that "installed" release have the archive installed and the codename now.
To see the release descriptions of releases a version belongs to:
cupt show --with-release-info package_name
Example:
cupt show --with-release-info dpkg
Each package version has a pin, an integer number. Amongst all versions of the same binary package, the one who has maximal pin is policy, or candidate version.
Cupt assigns pins to package versions according to the APT documentation (apt_preferences(5)). Plus, it adds:
cupt::cache::pin::addendums::downgrade)
cupt::cache::pin::addendums::hold)
experimental distribution (the option cupt::cache::pin::addendums::not-automatic)
Note that sometimes the way APT assigns pins to versions is not the way described in its documentation, so Cupt's pins (modulo Cupt-specific additions described above) are not necessarily identical to what APT produces.
cupt policy package_name
Example:
$ cupt policy dpkg
dpkg:
Installed: 1.15.5.6
Candidate: 1.15.8.10
Version table:
1.15.8.10 991
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian testing/main (signed)
http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian unstable/main (unsigned)
http://ftp.se.debian.org/debian testing/main (signed)
http://ftp.se.debian.org/debian unstable/main (signed)
*** 1.15.5.6 100
/var/lib/dpkg/status installed/ (unsigned)
1.14.31 -1499
http://security.debian.org oldstable/main (signed)
In the output above we can see: installed version ('1.15.5.6'), candidate version ('1.15.8.10') and a version table. In total, 3 versions of dpkg are available.
For each version in version table we can see (on example of '1.15.8.10'): a version pin ('991'), a list of repositories where this version is available.
Each repository line is:
basic_URI archive/component (signeness)
The repository marked as signed if it has a valid and verified cryptographic signature, and unsigned otherwise.
When there are more than one version for a package, Cupt provides following ways to select a version of the binary package in the arguments of the various subcommands:
cupt show dpkg
=version.
Example:
cupt show dpkg=1.15.8.10
/archive or /codename.
Examples:
cupt show dpkg/unstable
cupt show dpkg/sid
The syntax described above is known as binary package version expression. In the cupt(1) manual page all subcommands which accept this syntax are clearly marked as such.
Many subcommands accept several arguments of the same meaning. Examples:
cupt show dpkg cupt libpqxx3=3.0.2-1>
cupt install youtube-dl clive/stable
cupt remove libabc-dev libefg-dev libxyz-dev
cupt policy perl perl-base
You can use wildcards * and ? to select multiple package names. Examples:
cupt show perl-b*
Shows policy versions of packages which names start with perl-b, for example
perl-base and perl-byacc.
cupt show perl-*/experimental
Shows experimental version of packages which names start with perl- and
which have experimental versions. In other words, packages without a version in
experimental distribution won't be selected.
cupt show *=2.0.0-1 | grep Package
List packages which have a version 2.0.0-1. Using wildcards with versions is
maybe useless, but possible.
cupt full-upgrade xserver-xorg-*/installed
Perform a full upgrade but keep all installed packages with names starting with
xserver-xorg- at their current versions.
cupt show ?aff*
Show policy versions of packages with names which have 'a', 'f' and 'f' on 2nd,
3rd and 4th positions (starting with 1st), respectively.
Also, some subcommands accept arguments' special modifiers:
You can use the + modifier in subcommands: remove, purge. Examples:
cupt remove youtube-dl clive+: remove youtube-dl, install clive
cupt purge exim4 msmtp-mta+ mutt/experimental+: remove exim4 along with
its configuration files, install msmtp-mta and mutt (from experimental)
You can use the - modifier in the install and *-upgrade-like subcommands. Examples:
cupt install gnuchess/unstable gnome-chess pychess-: install gnuchess
(from unstable), gnome-chess, remove pychess
cupt full-upgrade cvs-:
a) cvs is installed -> do an upgrade with removing cvs
b) cvs is not installed -> do an upgrade, keeping cvs uninstalled
Cupt has an integration (through a special download method) with
debdelta(1). To make Cupt try to download archive deltas before downloading
full archives, just install the package debdelta and that's it. No manual
invocation of debdelta utilities is needed.
See more about debdelta project here: http://debdelta.debian.net/.
To list the dependencies of one or more package versions, use the subcommand depends:
cupt depends libc6/testing arora/unstable
If you don't want to see Recommends there, use --important:
cupt depends --important libc6/testing
If, on the contrary, you want to see even Suggests, use --with-suggests:
cupt depends --with-suggests libc6/testing
You can also list selected relations recursively, using --recurse:
cupt depends --recurse dpkg
If you want to see a reverse dependencies of some version, use the subcommand rdepends:
cupt rdepends xz-utils
All the command switches described here are also applicable to rdepends as well.
You can request more information to show in the action preview prompt:
--show-versions (-V) option. Example:
$ cupt install gcc-4.6 -V Building the package cache... Initializing package resolver and worker... Scheduling requested actions... Resolving possible unmet dependencies... The following 7 packages will be INSTALLED: cpp-4.6 [4.6.0~rc1-1] gcc-4.6 [4.6.0~rc1-1] gcc-4.6-base [4.6.0~rc1-1] libppl-c4 [0.11.2-3] libppl9 [0.11.2-3] libpwl5 [0.11.2-3] libquadmath0 [4.6.0~rc1-1] The following 4 packages will be UPGRADED: binutils [2.20.1-15 -> 2.21.0.20110302-2] libcloog-ppl0 [0.15.9-2 -> 0.15.9-3] libgcc1 [1:4.5.2-1 -> 1:4.6.0~rc1-1] libgomp1 [4.5.2-1 -> 4.6.0~rc1-1]
--show-size-changes (-Z) option. Example:
$ cupt install gcc-4.6 -Z Building the package cache... Initializing package resolver and worker... Scheduling requested actions... Resolving possible unmet dependencies... The following 7 packages will be INSTALLED: cpp-4.6 <+10.6MiB> gcc-4.6 <+15.0MiB> gcc-4.6-base <+192KiB> libppl-c4 <+4264KiB> libppl9 <+1176KiB> libpwl5 <+100KiB> libquadmath0 <+496KiB> The following 4 packages will be UPGRADED: binutils <+1300KiB> libcloog-ppl0 libgcc1 <+8192B> libgomp1 <+16.0KiB>
--show-reasons (-D) option.
Example:
$ cupt install gcc-4.6 -D
Building the package cache...
Initializing package resolver and worker...
Scheduling requested actions...
Resolving possible unmet dependencies...
The following 7 packages will be INSTALLED:
cpp-4.6
reason: gcc-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'cpp-4.6 (= 4.6.0~rc1-1)'
gcc-4.6
reason: user request
gcc-4.6-base
reason: cpp-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'gcc-4.6-base (= 4.6.0~rc1-1)'
libppl-c4
reason: gcc-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'libppl-c4'
libppl9
reason: gcc-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'libppl9'
libpwl5
reason: libppl-c4 0.11.2-3 depends on 'libpwl5'
libquadmath0
reason: gcc-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'libquadmath0 (>= 4.6.0~rc1-1)'
The following 4 packages will be UPGRADED:
binutils
reason: gcc-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'binutils (>= 2.21~)'
libcloog-ppl0
reason: gcc-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'libcloog-ppl0 (>= 0.15.9-3~)'
libgcc1
reason: gcc-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'libgcc1 (>= 1:4.6.0~rc1-1)'
libgomp1
reason: gcc-4.6 4.6.0~rc1-1 depends on 'libgomp1 (>= 4.6.0~rc1-1)'
You can also combine them.
In a solution preview (action preview prompt) you have an ability to specify more package expressions and a restart a resolving process. To do this, use the choice a. Example:
$ cupt install gnash Building the package cache... Initializing package resolver and worker... Scheduling requested actions... Resolving possible unmet dependencies... The following 64 packages will be INSTALLED: dmsetup dosfstools freepats fuse-utils gconf2-common gnash gnash-common gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-base gvfs hdparm libass4 libatasmart4 libboost-thread1.42.0 libcdaudio1 libcelt0-0 libexempi3 libexif12 libfftw3-3 libflite1 libfuse2 libgconf2-4 libgdu0 libgme0 libgnome-keyring0 libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-common libgtkglext1 libgudev-1.0-0 libidl0 libiptcdata0 libkate1 liblvm2app2.2 libmimic0 libmms0 libmodplug1 libmusicbrainz4c2a libntfs-3g75 libntfs10 libofa0 libopenspc0 liborbit2 liborc-0.4-0 libparted0debian1 libpolkit-backend-1-0 libraptor2-0 librasqal3 librsvg2-2 libsgutils2-2 libslv2-9 libsoundtouch0 libvisual-0.4-0 libvisual-0.4-plugins libwildmidi1 libyajl1 libzbar0 mtools ntfs-3g ntfsprogs policykit-1 policykit-1-gnome udisks The following 12 packages will be UPGRADED: libblkid1 libdbus-glib-1-2 libdevmapper1.02.1 libglib2.0-0 libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 libgstreamer0.10-0 libpcre3 libpolkit-agent-1-0 libpolkit-gobject-1-0 librdf0 libschroedinger-1.0-0 libudev0 The following 2 packages will be REMOVED: libeggdbus-1-0(a) librasqal2(a) Need to get 62.3MiB/62.3MiB of archives. After unpacking 105MiB will be used. Do you want to continue? [y/N/q/a/?] a Enter a package expression (empty to finish): libgnome-keyring0- Enter a package expression (empty to finish): The following 39 packages will be INSTALLED: freepats gnash gnash-common gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad gstreamer0.10-plugins-base libass4 libboost-thread1.42.0 libcdaudio1 libcelt0-0 libexempi3 libexif12 libfftw3-3 libflite1 libgme0 libgsf-1-114 libgsf-1-common libgtkglext1 libgudev-1.0-0 libiptcdata0 libkate1 libmimic0 libmms0 libmodplug1 libmusicbrainz4c2a libofa0 libopenspc0 liborc-0.4-0 libraptor2-0 librasqal3 librsvg2-2 libslv2-9 libsoundtouch0 libvisual-0.4-0 libvisual-0.4-plugins libwildmidi1 libyajl1 libzbar0 The following 7 packages will be UPGRADED: libglib2.0-0 libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0 libgstreamer0.10-0 libpcre3 librdf0 libschroedinger-1.0-0 libudev0 The following 1 packages will be REMOVED: librasqal2(a) Leave the following dependencies unresolved: gstreamer0.10-plugins-base 0.10.30-1 recommends 'gvfs' Need to get 56.2MiB/56.2MiB of archives. After unpacking 85.6MiB will be used. Do you want to continue? [y/N/q/a/?]
The effect above is the same as if you specified
cupt install gnash libgnome-keyring0-
in the command line from the start.
There are two types of configuration variables - regular (or scalar) and list ones. Scalar options have a single scalar value, and list option's value is a list of strings. Modifying a scalar option means substituting its previous value completely in favor of new specified one, modifying a list option means adding one more string to the existing list.
Cupt has many configuration variables, some of them may be specified/overridden using command-line switches, some needs to be modified explicitly. See the full variable list and descriptions at cupt(1)/Configuration variables.
To see the current configuration, use config-dump subcommand. Examples:
$ cupt config-dump | grep recommends apt::install-recommends "yes"; cupt::resolver::keep-recommends "yes"; cupt::resolver::tune-score::failed-recommends "600";
$ cupt config-dump | grep "methods "
cupt::downloader::protocols::copy::methods { "file"; };
cupt::downloader::protocols::debdelta::methods { "debdelta"; };
cupt::downloader::protocols::file::methods { "file"; };
cupt::downloader::protocols::ftp::methods { "curl"; };
cupt::downloader::protocols::ftp::methods { "wget"; };
cupt::downloader::protocols::http::methods { "curl"; };
cupt::downloader::protocols::http::methods { "wget"; };
cupt::downloader::protocols::https::methods { "curl"; };
cupt::downloader::protocols::https::methods { "wget"; };
You can distingiush list options there by figure brackets around the values.
Cupt reads configuration first from files (conforming to the APT documentation
(apt.conf(5))), then applies those specified in the command line using
--option (or -o) switch or by dedicated switches corresponding to the
option.
To modify a regular option in the command line, use
-o option_name=new_value
Example:
cupt install kmail -o cupt::console::assume-yes=yes
To modify a list option (i.e. add a new string) in the command line, use
-o option_name::=added_string
Example:
cupt -s update -o "apt::update::pre-invoke::=ls /var"
You can use -o multiple times.
If you want to know, is a certain package automatically installed or not, do
cupt show --installed-only package_name
Example:
cupt show --installed-only dpkg
To list manually installed packages:
cupt showauto --invert
To list automatically installed packages:
cupt showauto
To mark some package(s) as automatically installed, use the markauto subcommand, for example:
cupt markauto libqtcore4 udev
To mark some package(s) as manually installed, use the unmarkauto subcommand, for example:
cupt unmarkauto tar traceroute
When doing installs/upgrades/etc. all newly installed packages not requested by user are marked as automatically installed. For every package management actions Cupt's resolver can determine if some automatically installed packages are not needed anymore. Automatically installed packages, which are no more a part of any valuable dependency chain of manually installed packages, are deleted by default. The names of this process is auto-removal.
If you don't want auto-removal to be performed, use --no-auto-remove switch
or set the option cupt::resolver::auto-remove to no.
All forward interdependencies between packages can be divided into two groups -- hard and soft ones. While hard dependencies must be satisfied in order to make a system (or proposed solution) valid, soft ones may stay unsatisfied. Hard dependencies are 'Pre-Depends', 'Depends'. Soft dependencies are 'Recommends', 'Suggests' and 'Enhances'. Cupt completely ignores 'Enhances', but can act on 'Recommends' or 'Suggests'. All the remainder of this section is dedicated to the last two.
By default, Cupt ignores 'Suggests', but tries to, with an average priority, satisfy new dependencies in 'Recommends' and keep already satisfied 'Recommends'.
You can use the following options to change the behavior:
no to not satisfy new 'Recommends'. See also the command-line
switch --no-install-recommends.
no to make resolver ignore all 'Recommends'
yes to make resolver try to satisfy new 'Suggests'
yes to make resolver try to keep already satisfied 'Suggests'
Note 1: having the option apt::install-X set to yes without
cupt::resolver::keep-X set to yes as well is useless, Cupt's native
resolver will warn about it.
Note 2: even when the appropriate apt::install-X option is set, Cupt
ignores not changed soft dependencies. Say, if there is an installed package
gettext of version 1.2 which Recommends: cvs, a relation cvs is not
satisfied in the system, and gettext is upgraded to a version 1.3 which also
have the same Recommends: cvs, Cupt won't try to satisfy this dependency.
After you agree with a proposed solution (by entering a positive answer in an action preview prompt) Cupt starts a package installation process, which is done in several phases:
*.deb). May be empty
if no packages are needed or all needed packages are already in the cache.
dpkg::pre-invoke and
dpkg::pre-install-pkgs) if any. Examples of them are apt-listchanges(1),
apt-listbugs(1) and dpkg-preconfigure(1). These hooks may ask questions
and cancel the whole package installation process.
dpkg::post-invoke) if any.
Note: Cupt itself does not ask anything from the user during the package installation process. All questions usually come from programs which Cupt calls.
Example:
1: # cupt install cmake 2: Building the package cache... 3: Initializing package resolver and worker... 4: Scheduling requested actions... 5: Resolving possible unmet dependencies... 6: 7: The following 4 packages will be INSTALLED: 8: 9: libarchive1 libcurl3 libssh2-1 libxmlrpc-core-c3 10: 11: The following 2 packages will be UPGRADED: 12: 13: cmake cmake-data 14: 15: Need to get 5637KiB/6007KiB of archives. After unpacking 1963KiB will be freed. 16: Do you want to continue? [y/N/q/a/?] y 17: Performing requested actions: 18: Get:1 http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian wheezy/main,sid/main,wheezy/main,sid/main cmake-data 2.8.4+dfsg.1-2 [1224KiB] 19: Get:2 http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian wheezy/main,sid/main,wheezy/main,sid/main cmake 2.8.4+dfsg.1-2 [4102KiB] 20: Get:3 http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian wheezy/main,sid/main,wheezy/main,sid/main libarchive1 2.8.4-1 [149KiB] 21: Get:4 http://ftp.fi.debian.org/debian wheezy/main,sid/main,wheezy/main,sid/main libxmlrpc-core-c3 1.16.33-2 [162KiB] 22: Fetched 5637KiB in 1s. 23: Reading changelogs... Done 24: Selecting previously deselected package libarchive1. 25: (Reading database ... 94022 files and directories currently installed.) 26: Unpacking libarchive1 (from .../libarchive1_2.8.4-1_i386.deb) ... 27: Setting up libarchive1 (2.8.4-1) ... 28: Processing triggers for man-db ... 29: Selecting previously deselected package libssh2-1. 30: (Reading database ... 94034 files and directories currently installed.) 31: Unpacking libssh2-1 (from .../libssh2-1_1.2.6-1_i386.deb) ... 32: Setting up libssh2-1 (1.2.6-1) ... 33: Selecting previously deselected package libcurl3. 34: (Reading database ... 94041 files and directories currently installed.) 35: Unpacking libcurl3 (from .../libcurl3_7.21.3-1_i386.deb) ... 36: Setting up libcurl3 (7.21.3-1) ... 37: Selecting previously deselected package libxmlrpc-core-c3. 38: (Reading database ... 94058 files and directories currently installed.) 39: Unpacking libxmlrpc-core-c3 (from .../libxmlrpc-core-c3_1.16.33-2_i386.deb) ... 40: Setting up libxmlrpc-core-c3 (1.16.33-2) ... 41: (Reading database ... 94080 files and directories currently installed.) 42: Removing cmake ... 43: Processing triggers for man-db ... 44: (Reading database ... 94071 files and directories currently installed.) 45: Preparing to replace cmake-data 2.8.1-2 (using .../cmake-data_2.8.4+dfsg.1-2_all.deb) ... 46: Unpacking replacement cmake-data ... 47: Setting up cmake-data (2.8.4+dfsg.1-2) ... 48: emacsen-common: Handling install of emacsen flavor emacs 49: Processing triggers for man-db ... 50: Selecting previously deselected package cmake. 51: (Reading database ... 94087 files and directories currently installed.) 52: Unpacking cmake (from .../cmake_2.8.4+dfsg.1-2_i386.deb) ... 53: Setting up cmake (2.8.4+dfsg.1-2) ... 54: Processing triggers for man-db ...
In the output above:
2-5: information messages 7-16: action preview prompt 17: phase 'preparation' 18-22: phase 'downloading' 23: phase 'pre-hooks' (namely, apt-listchanges) 24-54: phase 'action themselves', dpkg's output
In the case the process fails at phase 'action themselves' (either due to bug in Cupt, dpkg, or packages), you'll see some error messages from dpkg and then error messages from Cupt.
Source packages are the files from which binary packages are built. They have two major differences:
To view a source package information:
cupt showsrc package_name
Example:
cupt showsrc cupt
You can specify more than one package, for example:
cupt showsrc sed mawk
To view available source versions, pin info and releases versions come from,
use policysrc subcommand. Its output is the same as for policy
subcommand. Example:
cupt policysrc sed mawk
To download source package(s), use the source subcommand, for example:
cupt source clive youtube-dl
By default source subcommand also unpack the package so it's ready for the
exploring and building. To prevent this, use the --download-only switch.
Also, you can download only one part of source package, use switches
--tar-only, --diff-only and --dsc-only for that.
If you want to build binary packages out of a source one, you will have to
satisfy source package's build dependencies before. Use the subcommand
build-dep to do it, for example:
cupt build-dep clive
All new packages, installed by this subcommand, will be marked as automatically installed, and will be a subject for auto-removal at next package management action.
So, the process of building binary packages out of source one may be, taking
clive package as an example:
cupt source clive cupt build-dep clive cd clive-2.2.13 && debuild && cd ../ [...] cupt install
The last line will remove all unneeded anymore packages (given auto-removal is
turned on), including those installed by build-dep.
You can select source package versions in two ways:
cupt showsrc game-music-emu=0.5.5-2 gcc-defaults/experimental
$ cupt show g++/experimental | head -n5 Package: g++ Version: 4:4.6.0-2exp1 Status: not installed Source: gcc-defaults Source version: 1.101exp1 $ cupt showsrc g++/experimental | head -n3 Package: gcc-defaults Binary: cpp, g++, g++-multilib, gobjc, gobjc-multilib, gobjc++, gobjc++-multilib, gfortran, gfortran-multilib, gccgo, gccgo-multilib, libgcj-common, gcj, gij, libgcj-bc, gcj-jdk, gcj-jre-headless, gcj-jre, gcc, gcc-multilib, gdc, gcc-spu, g++-spu, gfortran-spu Version: 1.101exp1Here,
g++ is a binary package name and gcc-defaults is a source package
name. In the second command, as there is no source package g++, a binary
package was looked up, a version 4:4.6.0-2exp1 of it was found, and then a
source version was selected as if you specified
cupt showsrc gcc-defaults=1.101exp1in the first place.
You can supply both syntaxes to all subcommands which work with source package versions, examples:
cupt build-dep clive/unstable
cupt source man-db=2.5.9-4>
Cupt has a shell-like environment, in which you can supply any subcommand as if you typed it in to the command line, but without preceding cupt command name.
Example:
$ cupt shell
This is interactive shell of cupt package manager.
Building the package cache... [done]
cupt>policy libsoprano4
libsoprano4:
Installed: 2.2.2+dfsg.1-1
Candidate: 2.3.0+dfsg.1-2
Version table:
2.3.0+dfsg.1-2 501
http://debian.org.ua/debian unstable/main (signed)
*** 2.2.2+dfsg.1-1 100
/var/lib/dpkg/status installed/ (unsigned)
2.3.0+dfsg.1-1 2
http://debian.org.ua/debian experimental/main (signed)
cupt>depends libsoprano4/experimental
libsoprano4 2.3.0+dfsg.1-1:
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.5)
Depends: libclucene0ldbl (>= 0.9.20-1)
Depends: libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1)
Depends: libqt4-dbus (>= 4:4.5.2)
Depends: libqt4-network (>= 4:4.5.2)
Depends: libqt4-xml (>= 4:4.5.2)
Depends: libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.5.2)
Depends: libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.1)
Depends: soprano-daemon (= 2.3.0+dfsg.1-1)
cupt>rdepends soprano-daemon
soprano-daemon 2.3.0+dfsg.1-2:
Reverse-Depends: libsoprano4 2.3.0+dfsg.1-2: soprano-daemon (= 2.3.0+dfsg.1-2)
cupt>show soprano-daemon
Package: soprano-daemon
Version: 2.3.0+dfsg.1-2
Status: not installed
Source: soprano
Priority: optional
Section: utils
Size: 153KiB
Uncompressed size: 536KiB
Maintainer: Debian Qt/KDE Maintainers <debian-qt-kde@lists.debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.2.5), libgcc1 (>= 1:4.1.1), libqt4-dbus (>= 4:4.5.2), libqt4-network (>= 4:4.5.2),
libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.5.2), libraptor1 (>= 1.4.18), librdf0 (>= 1.0.9), libsoprano4 (>= 2.3.0), libstdc++6 (>= 4.1.1)
Conflicts: libsoprano-dev (<< 2.3.0+dfsg.1-1), libsoprano4 (<< 2.3.0+dfsg.1-1)
Replaces: libsoprano-dev (<< 2.3.0+dfsg.1-1), libsoprano4 (<< 2.3.0+dfsg.1-1)
URI: http://debian.org.ua/debian/pool/main/s/soprano/soprano-daemon_2.3.0+dfsg.1-2_amd64.deb
MD5: af29b39a741d9a52de91c8e5562e0609
SHA1: 1dfebe27b79f10911358949e56f89c64b43265eb
SHA256: d5b290a60de56f6a7e0af44f5265c6668bb4689204556b9022a5233a808349fc
Description: daemon for the Soprano RDF framework
Soprano is a pluggable RDF storage, parsing, and serialization framework based
on Qt 4. Soprano is targeted at desktop applications that need to store RDF
data. Its API has been optimized for simplicity and ease of use, while its
modular structure allows it to use various different RDF storage
implementations as its backend.
.
This package contains the Soprano daemon, D-Bus service, parser
plugins, and a storage plugin for the Redland RDF Application Framework.
Homepage: http://soprano.sourceforge.net
cupt>--simulate install libsoprano4
Building the package cache... [done]
Initializing package resolver and worker... [done]
Scheduling requested actions... [done]
Resolving possible unmet dependencies...
The following 1 packages will be INSTALLED:
soprano-daemon
The following 1 packages will be UPGRADED:
libsoprano4
Need to get 700KiB/700KiB of archives. After unpacking 196KiB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [y/N/q] q
cupt>exit
What this mode may be useful for:
shell subcommand, as all others, recognizes cupt(1)/Common options,
you can use that to set some configuration options for all the shell session.
Example:
cupt shell --simulate -o apt::install-recommends=noInstalling new recommends will be switched off for all the session inside the shell, and no real actions will be performed for subcommands that change the system. Note that you can override them (by supplying
-o cupt::worker::simulate=no
and -o apt::install-recommends=yes, respectively, for this example).
System snapshots, created by Cupt, consist of binary archives of installed packages. The idea is you create snapshots at some time, and when after some changes you system is messed up, you can go back to the working set of packages.
Caveats:
It's recommended not to use this feature if you have better alternatives available (for example, LVM snapshots or filesystem-level snapshots).
To create a snapshot, use
cupt snapshot save snapshot_name
Example:
cupt snapshot save 20110405
To revert the system to a saved snapshot, use
cupt snapshot load snapshot_name
Example:
cupt snapshot load 20110405
You can also list the available snapshots (cupt snapshot list), rename
(cupt snapshot rename), remove (cupt snapshot remove).
There is an ability to change the system not by specifying versions of packages
to install or remove, but by specifying dependencies just as some binary
package have them. The subcommand to perform this is satisfy:
cupt satisfy dependency_expression_1 ... dependency_expression_N
Examples:
cupt satisfy "xserver-xorg (>> 1.6)" "xserver-common (<< 1.6.1~)"
cupt satisfy "nautilus (>= 2.16.0), libnautilus-extension1 (>= 2.16.0), wget (>= 1.10.0)"
cupt satisfy "youtube-dl | clive"
If you want some dependency expression to be unsatisfied instead, add minus
(-) to the end of an argument:
cupt satisfy mail-reader-
Be careful:
cupt satisfy vim emacs-: install vim or anything which provides it, remove emacs and anything which provides it
cupt satisfy "vim, emacs-": remove emacs, vim and anything which provides them
If you happen to have a system, where the disk space is very limited, doing a big upgrades or installations can be a problem. For example, you have 1 GiB of disk space total, installed packages occupy 600 MiB of them, now you want to do a massive upgrade, and it's needed to download 500 MiB of archives to do that, and after the upgrade packages will occupy 700 MiB. Here, the simple approach of download everything needed and then upgrade everything needed wouldn't work since there is no 1100 MiB of the disk space available. The answer is to do the upgrade by smaller parts. Now, although it can be done by selecting groups of packages to upgrade or install by hand, Cupt can try to do it automatically.
To enable the changeset-based mode you will be need specify how many space is available for downloaded files. It's impossible to compute the amount reliably since changed packages may use some additional space (for example, kernel upgrades) or you may write or remove something to the filesystem before/while the upgrading is progressing. A rough guess of 'amount of free space minus 100 MiB' is a good start.
After you computed the disk space you can give for package archives, specify it
as a value, in bytes, for cupt::worker::archives-space-limit option.
Example:
cupt full-upgrade -o cupt::worker::archives-space-limit=200000000
Once this option is set, an action scheduler will try to divide all the changes into smaller consequtive changesets so the following conditions are met:
If such changesets are found, Cupt will proceed with actions, otherwise an error with a minimal suitable number will be printed.
For each changeset, package archives will be downloaded before doing actions and removed before the next changeset begins.
Sometimes it is a good idea to keep installed binary packages which were built out of same source package (let's call them related) to have the same source version.
Related packages are synchronized if they have the same source version, i.e. binary version may not be the same. For example, the following pairs are usually synchronized:
qprint 1.0-1 and qprint-doc 1.0-1
qprint 1.0-1+b2 and qprint-doc 1.0-1
But the following are usually not:
qprint 1.0-1 and qprint-doc 1.0-2
Cupt's resolver tries to synchronize the versions of related binary packages if
the option cupt::resolver::synchronize-by-source-versions is set to
non-default value.
Note: this option works properly only if you have source packages available for all the packages touched by a resolver.
Note: this option doesn't touch installed packages.
Example:
cupt safe-upgrade -o cupt::resolver::synchronize-by-source-versions=hard
The hard value means that all changed packages must be synchronized, e.g.
consider the synchronization an additional hard dependency. The soft value
means that all unsynchronized changed packages will have a penalty of
cupt::resolver::score::failed-synchronization, e.g. consider the
synchronization as additional soft dependency.
Example:
Suppose we have libfoo1 and foo binary packages which came from the same
source package. We have libfoo1 1.2-1 and foo 1.2-1 installed.
Situation 1: libfoo1 has new 1.3-1 version and foo has new 1.3-1 version.
Situation 2: libfoo1 has new 1.3-1 version and foo has new 1.3-2 version.
We do:
cupt install foo
What would be done by resolver if we have:
foo, leave libfoo1 as of installed version
Situation 2: install new foo, leave libfoo1 as of installed version
foo and libfoo1
Situation 2: install new foo, leave libfoo1 as of installed version
foo and libfoo1
Situation 2: give up with an error tree, (assuming foo depends on
libfoo1, if it does not, then install new foo, remove libfoo1)
Cupt's native dependency problem resolver plans system changes, if needed, to make installed packages set correct after making the changes user demand.
In the most cases, there are several solutions to a problem. To choose amonst them, resolver assign scores to all of them.
Score is an integer (i.e. can positive and negative) and is a sum of version
pin difference (for uninstalled version, zero pin is assumed) and an action
modifier. Action modifiers are action type-specific addendums and are
controlled by the option group cupt::resolver::score::X (see the full
list of them in cupt(1)/Configuration variables).
For native resolver, the negative scores indicate "negative" changes, and positive scores indicate "positive" changes. When several alternative solutions for a problem are available, they are considered in the score descending order. The ultimate goal of score system to assign positive scores to everything user wants and negative scores to everything user don't want. But since "positive" and "negative" is something that varies from user to user and from action to action, there is no (and cannot be) a silver bullet.
So, how can you adjust solution scores? From the definition of the score (above) you may adjust version pinning and/or set resolver score variables to different values.
Examples:
$ echo 'q' | cupt -s -t experimental full-upgrade | fgrep 'following' W: some solutions were dropped, you may want to increase the value of the 'cupt::resolver::max-solution-count' option The following 202 packages will be INSTALLED: The following 710 packages will be UPGRADED: The following 55 packages will be REMOVED: Leave the following dependencies unresolved: $ echo 'q' | cupt -s -t experimental full-upgrade -o cupt::resolver::score::unsatisfied-recommends=250 | fgrep 'following' W: some solutions were dropped, you may want to increase the value of the 'cupt::resolver::max-solution-count' option The following 150 packages will be INSTALLED: The following 708 packages will be UPGRADED: The following 58 packages will be REMOVED: Leave the following dependencies unresolved: $ echo 'q' | cupt -s -t experimental full-upgrade -o cupt::resolver::score::unsatisfied-recommends=400 | fgrep 'following' W: some solutions were dropped, you may want to increase the value of the 'cupt::resolver::max-solution-count' option The following 149 packages will be INSTALLED: The following 708 packages will be UPGRADED: The following 58 packages will be REMOVED: Leave the following dependencies unresolved: $ echo 'q' | cupt -s -t experimental full-upgrade -o cupt::resolver::score::unsatisfied-recommends=1000 | fgrep 'following' W: some solutions were dropped, you may want to increase the value of the 'cupt::resolver::max-solution-count' option The following 148 packages will be INSTALLED: The following 708 packages will be UPGRADED: The following 58 packages will be REMOVED: Leave the following dependencies unresolved: $ echo 'q' | cupt -s -t experimental full-upgrade -o cupt::resolver::score::new=-1000 | fgrep 'following' W: some solutions were dropped, you may want to increase the value of the 'cupt::resolver::max-solution-count' option The following 64 packages will be INSTALLED: The following 661 packages will be UPGRADED: The following 100 packages will be REMOVED: Leave the following dependencies unresolved: WARNING! The following essential packages will be REMOVED: $ echo 'q' | cupt -s -t experimental full-upgrade -o cupt::resolver::score::new=-1000 -o cupt::resolver::score::downgrade=0 | fgrep 'following' W: some solutions were dropped, you may want to increase the value of the 'cupt::resolver::max-solution-count' option The following 26 packages will be INSTALLED: The following 618 packages will be UPGRADED: The following 42 packages will be REMOVED: Leave the following dependencies unresolved:
When an amount of available solutions is big, you may see the following message while resolver is operating:
W: some solutions were dropped, you may want to increase the value of the 'cupt::resolver::max-solution-count' option
Cupt's native resolver may have only limited amount of different solutions in
the memory, and this amount is determined by the value of the
cupt::resolver::max-solution-count option. The default value is enough for
requests of small and medium complexity, but may be not enough for request of
high complexity. So, for systems where there is enough free RAM, consider
increasing the value to values like 4000 or even 16000.
There are several types of debug information available, the debug output is
turned on by setting some debug::type option to `yes`. All debug output
lines is prepended with D: and are sent to standard error.
debug::resolver.
debug::worker.
debug::downloader.
debug::gpgv.
An example: you want to see a very detailed resolver information regarding your query:
cupt install exim4 -o debug::resolver=yes 2>resolver.debug.log
A debug information will be put to a file resolver.debug.log.