Automatically purging non-official packages
 

Hello,

Ubuntu has a "ppa-purge" script that not just removes Launchpad PPAs
from sources.list, but also automatically reverts any packages installed
from that PPA to the versions available in the official archives.

Has anyone ever written something similar for Debian? I'm thinking of a
script that deletes all packages that are not retrievable from any of
the registered sources, and downgrades (or upgrades) all packages to the
most recent version available.


Best,

-Nikolaus

--
»Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a Banana.«

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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:31:11 -0400, Nikolaus Rath wrote:

> Ubuntu has a "ppa-purge" script that not just removes Launchpad PPAs
> from sources.list, but also automatically reverts any packages installed
> from that PPA to the versions available in the official archives.

The only idea scares me :-}

> Has anyone ever written something similar for Debian? I'm thinking of a
> script that deletes all packages that are not retrievable from any of
> the registered sources, and downgrades (or upgrades) all packages to the
> most recent version available.

I'm not aware of any, but I would prefer to do that job manually and
carefully picking the available sources, packages and versions as
possible candidates for installing/upgrading/downgrading.

Anyway, porting the script to Debian shouldn't be difficult but I'm a bit
reluctant of that sort of automatisms.

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 12:31 PM, Nikolaus Rath <Nikolaus@rath.org> wrote:
>
> Ubuntu has a "ppa-purge" script that not just removes Launchpad PPAs
> from sources.list, but also automatically reverts any packages installed
> from that PPA to the versions available in the official archives.
>
> Has anyone ever written something similar for Debian? I'm thinking of a
> script that deletes all packages that are not retrievable from any of
> the registered sources, and downgrades (or upgrades) all packages to the
> most recent version available.

ppa-purge is a bash script so you could adapt it to your needs; or
inspire yourself from it since it might use unusable ppa-specific
searches, etc.

If you remove a repository from "/etc/apt/sources.list", you can list
obsolete packages with "apt-get update; aptitude search '?obsolete'"
(but they might not all be from that particular repository so you
might want to check before uninstalling/downgrading packages).


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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

I don't know the ""ppa-purge" script.
A good tool to identify from which source installed packages are coming seems to
me "apt-get-versions". Piping the output to a grep command similar to the
following for a mixed (from testing, unstable, and experimental) system

$ apt-show-versions | grep -Ev '/(testing|unstable)'

can assist finding candidate packages for further treatment.

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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> writes:
> On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:31:11 -0400, Nikolaus Rath wrote:
>
>> Ubuntu has a "ppa-purge" script that not just removes Launchpad PPAs
>> from sources.list, but also automatically reverts any packages installed
>> from that PPA to the versions available in the official archives.
>
> The only idea scares me :-}

Why?

Best,

-Nikolaus

--
»Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a Banana.«

PGP fingerprint: 5B93 61F8 4EA2 E279 ABF6 02CF A9AD B7F8 AE4E 425C


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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:31:11 -0400, Nikolaus Rath wrote:
>>
>> Ubuntu has a "ppa-purge" script that not just removes Launchpad PPAs
>> from sources.list, but also automatically reverts any packages installed
>> from that PPA to the versions available in the official archives.
>
> The only idea scares me :-}
>
>> Has anyone ever written something similar for Debian? I'm thinking of a
>> script that deletes all packages that are not retrievable from any of
>> the registered sources, and downgrades (or upgrades) all packages to the
>> most recent version available.
>
> I'm not aware of any, but I would prefer to do that job manually and
> carefully picking the available sources, packages and versions as
> possible candidates for installing/upgrading/downgrading.
>
> Anyway, porting the script to Debian shouldn't be difficult but I'm a bit
> reluctant of that sort of automatisms.

In my limited experience of "purge-ppa", it's worked very well.


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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 17:19:26 -0400, Tom H wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:31:11 -0400, Nikolaus Rath wrote:
>>>
>>> Ubuntu has a "ppa-purge" script that not just removes Launchpad PPAs
>>> from sources.list, but also automatically reverts any packages
>>> installed from that PPA to the versions available in the official
>>> archives.
>>
>> The only idea scares me :-}
>>
>>> Has anyone ever written something similar for Debian? I'm thinking of
>>> a script that deletes all packages that are not retrievable from any
>>> of the registered sources, and downgrades (or upgrades) all packages
>>> to the most recent version available.
>>
>> I'm not aware of any, but I would prefer to do that job manually and
>> carefully picking the available sources, packages and versions as
>> possible candidates for installing/upgrading/downgrading.
>>
>> Anyway, porting the script to Debian shouldn't be difficult but I'm a
>> bit reluctant of that sort of automatisms.
>
> In my limited experience of "purge-ppa", it's worked very well.

My guess is that is highly dependant on user's configuration: the lesser
repositories available + basic pinning rules = the higher chances for
getting successful results.

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> writes:
> On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 17:19:26 -0400, Tom H wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 2:47 PM, Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:31:11 -0400, Nikolaus Rath wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Ubuntu has a "ppa-purge" script that not just removes Launchpad PPAs
>>>> from sources.list, but also automatically reverts any packages
>>>> installed from that PPA to the versions available in the official
>>>> archives.
>>>
>>> The only idea scares me :-}
>>>
>>>> Has anyone ever written something similar for Debian? I'm thinking of
>>>> a script that deletes all packages that are not retrievable from any
>>>> of the registered sources, and downgrades (or upgrades) all packages
>>>> to the most recent version available.
>>>
>>> I'm not aware of any, but I would prefer to do that job manually and
>>> carefully picking the available sources, packages and versions as
>>> possible candidates for installing/upgrading/downgrading.
>>>
>>> Anyway, porting the script to Debian shouldn't be difficult but I'm a
>>> bit reluctant of that sort of automatisms.
>>
>> In my limited experience of "purge-ppa", it's worked very well.
>
> My guess is that is highly dependant on user's configuration: the lesser
> repositories available + basic pinning rules = the higher chances for
> getting successful results.

Why?


Best,

-Nikolaus

--
»Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a Banana.«

PGP fingerprint: 5B93 61F8 4EA2 E279 ABF6 02CF A9AD B7F8 AE4E 425C


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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 17:03:14 -0400, Nikolaus Rath wrote:

> Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:31:11 -0400, Nikolaus Rath wrote:
>>
>>> Ubuntu has a "ppa-purge" script that not just removes Launchpad PPAs
>>> from sources.list, but also automatically reverts any packages
>>> installed from that PPA to the versions available in the official
>>> archives.
>>
>> The only idea scares me :-}
>
> Why?

Package managing can be sometimes difficult to deal for an automated
routine and more that often needs human interaction.

For instance, by default ppa-purge (or a similar script) is instructed to
remove non official versions of the packages in favor of the ones
available in Debian repositories. Fine, but reverting ffmpeg from D-M to
the official version it can be undesiderable or even break based on the
current pining and priorities (it can leave your system with mixed
libraries from differenet sources).

I, personally, don't like playing much with this (packaging and
libraries). In the event I have to, I prefer to see and manually cherry
pick what to keep or what to upgrade/downgrade case by case.

Greetings,

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Automatically purging non-official packages
 

On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 18:10:34 -0400, Nikolaus Rath wrote:

> Camaleón <noelamac@gmail.com> writes:
>> On Sun, 11 Mar 2012 17:19:26 -0400, Tom H wrote:

(...)

>>> In my limited experience of "purge-ppa", it's worked very well.
>>
>> My guess is that is highly dependant on user's configuration: the
>> lesser repositories available + basic pinning rules = the higher
>> chances for getting successful results.
>
> Why?

Again? :-)

I already replied.

Greetings,

--
Camaleón


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