Packages and Package Management

Ubuntu comes with tools.
Tools are like "packages", bundled bits of useful commands.
Packages get managed: updated, bugs reported, versioned, etc. There are a lot of packages, as well as package managers.

Packages and Package Management
- There are many package managers

There are many package managers

dpkg is the package manager for Debian (the "parent" of ubuntu)
APT is based on dpkg && is available is debian linux distrobutions
YUM is built on RPM (which was a package manager by red hat)
DNF a next-gen of YUM
Pacman is for the Arch distro
APK is the manager of alpine

APT-GET

The APT in APT-GET stands for "advanced package tooling".
APT-GET is older than apt.

APT

apt install is the command to download packages.

install lolcat

Here, download a tool that turns cli output into a rainbow: lolcat.
sudo apt install lolcat.
Then send some content to lolcat with ls -lah | lolcat

install node


# search for apt packages with node in the name
# will return a bunch of packages
ubuntu@primary:~$ apt search nodejs

# show details on nodejs
ubuntu@primary:~$ apt show nodejs
ubuntu@primary:~$ apt show nodejs
Package: nodejs
Version: 10.19.0~dfsg-3ubuntu1
Priority: extra
Section: universe/web
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Debian Javascript Maintainers <pkg-javascript-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 153 kB
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.17), libnode64 (= 10.19.0~dfsg-3ubuntu1)
Recommends: ca-certificates, nodejs-doc
Suggests: npm
Conflicts: nodejs-legacy
Replaces: nodejs-legacy
Homepage: http://nodejs.org/
Download-Size: 61.2 kB
APT-Sources: http://ports.ubuntu.com/ubuntu-ports focal/universe arm64 Packages
Description: evented I/O for V8 javascript - runtime executable
Node.js is a platform built on Chrome\'s JavaScript runtime for easily
building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an
event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and
efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run
across distributed devices.
.
Node.js is bundled with several useful libraries to handle server
tasks:
.
System, Events, Standard I/O, Modules, Timers, Child Processes, POSIX,
HTTP, Multipart Parsing, TCP, DNS, Assert, Path, URL, Query Strings.

# install nodejs
# will print the install logs
ubuntu@primary:~$ sudo apt install nodejs

# try it out!
ubuntu@primary:~$ node -e "console.log(12 * 4)"
48

More Commands

A brief overview of some more apt commands:

# remove unused dependencies
ubuntu@primary:~$ apt --help
# ...shows more, here's a brief rundown...

Most used commands:
  list - list packages based on package names
  search - search in package descriptions
  show - show package details
  install - install packages
  reinstall - reinstall packages
  remove - remove packages
  autoremove - Remove automatically all unused packages
  update - update list of available packages
  upgrade - upgrade the system by installing/upgrading packages
  full-upgrade - upgrade the system by removing/installing/upgrading packages
  edit-sources - edit the source information file
  satisfy - satisfy dependency strings

More Recent Package Management with Snaps

Linux packages get packaged in several ways with several tools.
APT is a little unsafe - bad code can be introduced.
People try to install untrusted code and/or make code installable.
APT code is reviewed by open-source devs: this is fallable, not scalable, and not really "secure".
This happens with npm, the node package manager.

There are several initiatives to approach this problem & snaps is officially supported by canonical that is for ubuntu. These can also run on any linux distro, not just ubuntu.
APT, though, is just for ubuntu.

GUI tools, in ubuntu, are installed with snap.

Mint & Redhat (distros of linux) need snaps installed - they don't come with it.

# use snap to download a module
# NOTE: REVIEW THESE FLAGS if you want
sudo snap install --channel=16/stable --classic node

Here's a q&a comparing some nuts & bolts of packaging tools for reference.

Sandboxed

Packages are enclosed && include all the code needed to run it. Code doesn't have the ability to do anything beyond its own codebase.

Delta-Driven Updates

Apparently, apt, when updating a package, throws away the old version and downloads the new version.
snaps, though, can only ship the changes - less code over the web and less code to update.

auto updates

snaps auto-update: browsers auto-update... interesting parallel.

Tags:

linux