[Request for feature] RPM freshen equivalent

[hentismith]

Since information about each host package is already in apt-dater, please add a freshen command as seen in RPM.

rpm {-F|--freshen} will only upgrade a package that is already installed and older than the latest version. This would make apt-dater a much better tool to manage security updates etc going forward.

The method I currently use is to Ctrl-T and ~p , then ';' then 'i' and then again to force an install again.

This has many problems, for instance, packages that are already up to date will still run apt-get, the glob matching on ~p is not working correctly, and can lead to installing software accidentally.

Adding the Freshen functionality on 'F' would mean pressing 'F' and entering the exact package name, and apt-dater would then freshen the package on all hosts.

[liske]

Which implementation of apt-dater-host are you using? Maybe the --freshen call should be added to the rpm version when using (u)pdate in apt-dater?

[hentismith]

@liske I'm using apt-dater 1.0.3-3 in ubuntu zesty.

Adding --freshen support for RPM versions will likely be welcomed by RPM users, but it's missing completely for DEB users, hence requesting the feature in apt-dater.

H

[liske]

What is the different between rpm --freshen or using a rpm frontend like yum update (sorry, I'm not very familiar with the RPM-based GNU/Linux ecosystem)?

[hentismith]

@liske you cannot specify a package yum update. My use case for the "freshen" feature it to only update out of date packages using the TAG feature in apt-dater to update specific packages instead of trying to install the package on all tagged hosts regardless of the need to upgrade the package.

This is not something available in .deb format currently, which apt-dater can bring to the table as it would already have a record of what updates is available. For example:

* start apt-dater
* F prompts you for package name to freshen
* enter "vim"
* Only hosts with updates for vim then gets installed. Hosts that are up-to-date does not run any apt processes.

[liske]

Thanks for the explanation. On Debian one could use something like apt-get install --only-upgrade to upgrade only selected packages, too.