[ubuntu-studio-devel] ubuntustudio-dev-tools project, and the first tool in it: apt-search

[Kaj Ailomaa]

#ubuntustudio-dev-tools

I started a new project with a code branch that can be used to put any
useful development tools into. ubuntustudio-dev owns the code, and it's
our first git repo on launchpad.

LP project page: https://launchpad.net/ubuntustudio-dev-tools
GIT repo page:
https://code.launchpad.net/~ubuntustudio-dev/ubuntustudio-dev-tools/+git/ubuntustudio-dev-tools

# apt-search

Been working on a tool for a few weeks, since I couldn't find a nice way
to make package searches over several release of a distro, and also not
being able to search and compare packages between Debian and Ubuntu.
This kind of tool would be very useful for any flavor developer,
especially for us, I think.

The tool is not finished, but it is already somewhat useful. There are
some bugs, and missing features. I'm calling it apt-search. If you want
to check it out, get the source from the above link, and read the
README.md file for instructions.

It can search for packages in any stable release of Debian or Ubuntu,
using any of the debian/control fields for filtering, and able to output
in html and moin tables, or just the standard output which resembles the
debian/control files format.

Be warned that searching takes a really long time. I'd like to save the
cache in some type of database format in the future, and do db queries
instead. Thinking that would increase performance.

One possible use for this tool would be to compare an LTS release with
following stable releases to see which packages can be backported.
Another is to list packages interesting to us for any particular reason,
like we did for the freedesktop category stuff, though apt-search does
yet not search for files - which is another feature I was planning.

Hope this could be of some use to someone.

/Kaj