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- FLAVOR: all? - HEADLINE: Improve experience of using 3rd-party apt sources - DESCRIPTION: This suggestion is more apt related, but Ubuntu could lead the impro
by paulirwin 10y ago
- FLAVOR: all?
- HEADLINE: Improve experience of using 3rd-party apt sources
- DESCRIPTION: This suggestion is more apt related, but Ubuntu could lead the improvements. Many software providers (Microsoft, Elastic, etc) are using their own apt repositories to be able to deliver updates faster than the Ubuntu release cycle, which is great. However, configuring them usually requires Googling the instructions and at least 3 commands. For example, installing SQL Server for Linux has the following commands before you can even run apt-get install (from their official documentation):
curl https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc https://packages.microsoft.com/keys/microsoft.asc | sudo apt-key add -
curl https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/16.04/mssql-server.list https://packages.microsoft.com/config/ubuntu/16.04/mssql-ser... | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mssql-server.list
sudo apt-get update
That is not user-friendly at all. It would be great if apt could help you out here. i.e. if I type in "apt install mssql-server", it could detect that it is not in the Ubuntu sources but that it is available in a trusted 3rd party source, and prompt me to add that source to my local apt sources. It would then also automatically update that source.
Also, perhaps the Ubuntu sources have an older version but a newer version is available at a trusted 3rd party, and provide an informational message and an apt command-line flag that would allow you to add the source. i.e. "mssql-server 17.0.0 is available at the third party source 'microsoft'. To install it, run 'apt install mssql-server -S microsoft'" which would add the microsoft source and install the package.
- ROLE: software engineer
- Symbiote 10y agoIt's apt-add-repository. http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/wily/man1/add-apt-repository.1.html http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/wily/man1/add-apt-reposi...
- phoenix23 10y agoDoesn't this only work for PPAs that are in Launchpad? And doesn't Launchpad have extra limitations that third-party repos don't?
- collinmanderson 10y agoapt-add-repository is not installed by default.
- stephenr 10y agoI'm going to play devils advocate here: If running two pretty simple commands (`curl` a file into `apt-key`; `curl` a file to `tee`) before you can run `apt-get update` is "too hard" or "too complicated", maybe installing software on servers isn't for you. I also want to actually say good job to Microsoft on this one. Too many org's that run their own Apt repos just have `curl ... | sudo bash` as their install instructions. I would suggest Microsoft could produce a 'release' package to make any future updates to the key/repo url/names a bit simpler, but not doing a curl|sh is already miles ahead of plenty of shops.