Install packages on slackware

While pkgtool scores points for convenience, installpkg 8 is much more capable of handling odd tasks, such as quickly installing a single package, installing an entire disk set of packages, or scripting an install. Like all Slackware package management tools, it assumes that you know what you're doing and doesn't pretend to be smarter than you. In its simplest form, installpkg simply takes a list of packages to install, and does exactly what you would expect.

You can of course install multiple packages at a time, and in fact use shell wild cards. Should you want to know what individual files were installed as a part of that package, cat the contents of the package:. This will return everything from the size of the package, a description of what it does, and the name and location of every file installed as a part of the package. Removing a package is every bit as easy as installing one.

As you might expect, the command to do this is removepkg 8. Simply tell it which packages to remove, and removepkg will check the contents of the package database and remove all the files and directories for that package with one caveat. If that file is included in multiple installed packages, it will be skipped and if a directory has new files in it, the directory will be left in place.

Because of this, removing packages takes a good while longer than installing them. Finally, upgrading is just as easy with you guessed it , upgradepkg 8 which first installs a new package, then removes whatever files and directories are left-over from the old package.

All of these tools have useful arguments. For example, the —root to installpkg will install packages into an arbitrary directory. The —dry-run argument will instruct upgradepkg to simply tell you what it would attempt without actually making any changes to the system. For complete details, you should as always refer to the man pages.

In the past, all Slackware packages were compressed with the gzip 1 compression utility, which was a good compromise between compression speed and size. Recently, new compression schemes have been added and the package management tools have been upgraded to handle these.

Today, official Slackware packages are compressed with the xz utility and end with. Older packages and many third party packages still use the. It's worth emphasizing that. This has many advantages; they're easy to build on nearly any UNIX system many other package formats require special toolchains , and they're just as simple to de-construct. However, it is also important to realize that just because all Slackware packages are. Installpkg won't magically install just any.

Slackpkg is an automated tool for management of Slackware Linux Packages. This is particularly useful for security updates or significant application upgrades that are posted to the Slackware servers, some of which you may want to start using on your own system.

Find the mirror that is associated with your Slackware version and architecture, and uncomment it. This list of mirrors offers ftp and http access, but you must uncomment only one mirror. These package retrieval tools call to specific online package repositories which have been set by the user and allow the user to search the repositories to download and install pre-configured packages.

In contrast the package building tools are somewhat similar to the package retrieval tools but rather than downloading a pre-build package they retrieve a build script which can be customized and the subsequent source code allowing the user to custom compile an application for their system and their needs. Once the application has been compiled, the scripts pass the proper instructions to utilize the resulting binaries and build a Slackware formatted package that properly interacts with the Slackware package management tools.

The best comparison for package building tools is to compare them to the portage system that is used in Gentoo Linux. With of the quality of various tools, you have options for various functionality when it comes to package management and installations. The main three methods of installation are listed below:. To install Slackware from a pre-built package you can use installpkg , upgradepkg , swaret or slapt-get. This is very simple, in swaret or slapt-get you only need to choose the package and select to install it.

To install a package using the official tools you only need to call the program and use the package name as the argument, the example below is installing the application wine from the current workin directory. Many people have grown accustomed to this method over time, but it is not preferred in Slackware, instead, to document your actions and avoid replication of efforts it is advisable to build a slackbuild script , which will save you time and effort in the future. This is the true magic in Slackware, every official package that you receive has a slackbuild file, in the source directory on the Slackware disk you will find the slackbuild files and source code for every officially supported package.

Once the script has been run and the package has been built you then have a redistributable package for the specified application that fits your specific needs.

The slackbuild. Included in the slackbuild archive are the build script, license information,. There is also a mailing list and an irc channel available if you have questions or experience problems. When using Slackware, you have the ability to track the installation date, installed files, and the package description for all packages that are installed on your system. This will display all files within the package directory that contain the exact phrase that was called by grep. Enjoy the Holiday season!

Welcome to the Slackware Documentation Project. Book Creator Add this page to your book. Book Creator Remove this page from your book.

Manage book 0 page s. Table of Contents Package Managment. Brief Explanation of Slackware Packages. Why restrict Automatic Dependency Resolution? Installation and Package Management Tools. Compile the Application from the Source Code. Related Package Managment Articles. Slackware packages can be found with any of the following extensions: tbz - Slackware package archive compressed using bzip2.

It prompts for installation of packages that may have a bad security history, without manual research you would not be able to verify the security history of an installed package. It may install an application that conflicts with current installed applications, which can break software components in your system. If you may decide to recompile an application and remove certain functions, the removal of said functions may eliminate the need to have specific dependencies installed but with an auto-resolution system it will force those packages even though they are not needed.

It does this by isntalling the new package onto the system, and then removing any files from the old package that aren't in the new package taken from the man pages. It allows the user to install, remove, or view software packages through an interactive system. The main three methods of installation are listed below:.

To install Slackware from a pre-built package you can use installpkg, upgradepkg, swaret or slapt get. This is very simple, in swaret or slapt-get you only need to choose the package and select to install it. To install a package using the official tools you only need to call the program and use the package name as the argument, example..

I know that many people have grown accustomed to this method over time, but it is not preferred in Slackware, instead to document your actions and avoid replication of efforts it is advisable to build a slackbuild script, believe me this will save you some time and effort in the future.

This is the true magic in Slackware, every official package that you receive has a slackbuild file, in the source directory on the Slackware disk you will find the slackbuild files and source code for every package. Once the script has been run and the package has been built you then have a redistributable package for the specified application that fits your needs.

The slackbuild. Included in the slackbuild archive are the build script, license information,. There is also a mailing list and an irc channel available if you have questions or experience problems. Now for an example of how to build a package from a slackbuild, I will use audacity as an example. Also if you can build a program from source then it is advisable to make a build script using the examples from slackbuilds.

That is all that I can think of right now on this subject. I am sure that the readers will have much to add to detail additional options and functionality, so please add whatever you like in the comments. I know that I did not cover any specific tool in-depth but if you would like an in-depth explanation, please post a request in the Linux.