apt

• OSGeo4W command line Installer/Updater/Remover
• Installs osgeo4w\bin\apt.py which can be launched from the OSGeo4W shell.
• Source code at http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/browser/trunk/apt
• Maintained by MattWilkie

Current package version is v0.0-3. It can be found under Commandline Utilities in the setup.exe installer.

First time use, from within OSGeo4W shell:

apt setup
apt install shell

After that:

apt update        (fetch up-to-date setup.ini)
apt install gdal  (install package "gdal")
apt new           (show possible upgrades)
apt list          (show installed packages)
apt available     (show installation candidates)
apt remove xxx    (uninstall package xxx)

For a completely virgin system see ​Osgeo From Scratch which doesn't require an installed python or o4w shell.

Changes for v0.0-3:

• Start Menu and Desktop link creation is no longer hardcoded, and believed amenable to non-english locales (thanks to Luke Pinner)
• shares mirror and cache information with osgeo-setup.exe, so packages should only be downloaded once regardless which program is used.

Changes for v0.0-2:

• much better package removal (though still misses .tmpl files in ./bin and start menu shortcuts, #109)
• new command "apt available" shows packages which could be installed (previously one had to know the name already, #111)
• download percentage counter no longer reports >100% recieved

Apt.py and setup.exe use the same install database and procedures (though not code). One can switch between them at will depending on the needs of the moment. I would of course expect problems were both to run at the same time. Configure setup.exe's cache directory to C:\Osgeo4W\var\cache\setup to avoid duplicating downloads. (no longer needed post v0.0-3)

I've been using apt.py without significant issues for over a year, nevertheless I still consider this alpha software. This is my first real software development project and I've no training whatsoever. The only reason it works at all is because the original author, Jan Nieuwenhuizen, knew what he was doing when he wrote ​cyg-apt for cygwin.

The biggest functional problem is that uninstall is not yet comprehensive. There is little error trapping and not enough feedback on commands. For example "apt remove" just silently exits back to the shell prompt when it should respond with a usage message ("apt remove [package_name]"), at the least. (#53)

Feedback is welcome, especially on programming advice! Please use the o4w trac for logging bugs.

Enjoy!

-matt