bionic (8) apt-forktracer.8.gz

Provided by: apt-forktracer_0.5_all bug

NAME

       apt-forktracer - a utility for managing package versions

SYNOPSIS

       apt-forktracer [ -v ]

DESCRIPTION

   Background
       Maintaining Debian stable systems sometimes requires installation of unofficial versions of packages:

       backporting newer versions
              This is necessary, when significant new functionality is required on the system but unavailable in
              the official version found in the current stable release. In this case, the version string usually
              sorts  as newer than the official stable version string. This means that pinning is not necessary,
              as APT will select such package version by default.

       local changes to the official version
              Usually these are small changes, so  a  minor  modification  of  the  package  version  string  is
              sufficient. There are two ways to do this:

              Try  to  invent a version string newer than the current one, but older than the next official one.
              This way does not require pinning, but is difficult to do reliably.  It might turn out,  that  the
              next official version string is older than the one invented by you, which would cause the official
              version to be silently ignored.

              The other way is to modify the version string in such way that it sorts as older than the official
              one.   The  tilde  character  is  very useful here, because dpkg treats it in a special way: it is
              sufficient to append any string starting with the tilde,  to  the  version  string,  e.g.   1.21.2~sl.1.   This  requires  you  to  "pin"  the  package to that version, but it is more reliable,
              because works regardless of what the next official version number will be.

       In both cases, there is one major drawback: APT will  not  warn  you  when  newer  versions  of  official
       packages  (point  releases, security updates) will appear in the stable release.  This means you may miss
       some important change.

       apt-forktracer's job let you track newer official versions of locally overridden packages.

   Official package version definition
       Official package version is a version which is available from  a  source,  whose  Release  file's  Origin
       header value is equal to the system distributor identifier, as indicated by the lsb_release --id command,
       or by the DISTRIB_ID field in the /etc/lsb-release file.

   Program operation
       apt-forktracer analyzes each installed  package  separately,  reporting  on  the  standard  output  these
       packages  which  are  in a "non-standard" state. What "non-standard" means depends on the mode of program
       operation:

       default (non-verbose) mode
              this state means packages in an incorrect state (e.g. no  candidate  version)  or  packages  whose
              candidate version is different than the newest available official version.

       verbose mode
              this state also includes packages whose installed version is different from the candidate version

       In  the  default  mode the program also reads configuration files, which let you ignore some of the "non-
       standard" packages, as long as they meet certain criteria.  If there is  no  configuration  for  a  given
       package, then a default configuration is used.  More information is available in forktracer.conf(5).

   Message format
       The program outputs messages such as the following:

           foobar (1.2.3->1.2.4) [Debian: 1.2.3 1.2.4] [Other origin: 1.2.2]

       Where:

       foobar package name

       1.2.3  installed package version

       1.2.4  candidate package version - see apt-cache(8).

       Debian the value of the "Origin" field of one of the package sources. Versions available from this source
              are listed after a colon.

       Other origin
              another source origin

OPTIONS

       -v     Turns on the verbose mode.

FILES

       /etc/apt/forktracer.conf
       /etc/apt/forktracer.d/*.conf

SEE ALSO

       forktracer.conf(5), apt_preferences(5), apt-cache(8).