apt and getupdates

Jim O'Halloran • January 18, 2004

linux-and-open-source linuxconfau-2004

After the keynote I saw Marc Merlin's "apt-get and getupdates" talk. Debian's apt tool allows you to keep packages up to date on a system, but doesn't really handle configuration files. That's where getupdates comes in, get updates allows you to push (or pull) updates to machines. These updates consist of shell scripts to perform various actions such as installing a package or altering a configuration file. This allows getupdates to be used for altering the configuration of a machine without pushing out all new configuration files. Getupdates also allows you to run a lead/gold configuration, allowing you to test updates on a selected group of machines (lead), then turn it into gold and release it to all machines. Slides for this talk are available here.