aptitude 0.5.0 released

I've released version 0.5.0 of the aptitude package manager (release notes). Once the mirrors have synced, you should be able to download it from Debian's experimental distribution, or manually from the aptitude package page.

[Edit] This release was uploaded to experimental because it is not a final release. aptitude follows the Linux version numbering scheme in which an odd second digit indicates an unstable development version. DO NOT INSTALL THIS VERSION IF YOU WANT STABLE SOFTWARE; IT IS INCOMPLETE, INADEQUATE, AND PROBABLY INCORRECT.

To reply to some questions that several people have asked me:

The final release of aptitude 0.6.0 will be split into two packages, one containing only the traditional text interface and named aptitude-curses, and one containing the GUI binary named aptitude-gtk, with both of them providing the aptitude binary through Debian's alternatives mechanism. This release wasn't split because the code to drop GTK+ support was buggy and I discovered this fact halfway through assembling the release. It's fixed now.
To run the traditional curses interface, pass the --no-gui command-line parameter or set the option Aptitude::Start-Gui to false in /etc/apt/apt.conf. Unless you want to test that the curses frontend isn't broken, though, there won't be much for you in this release: the only change affecting it is Xapian support, and that currently breaks incremental search. (see the note above about this being an unstable release)

Also, another feature that I suspect might be bothersome is the behavior of updating the package lists and downloading changelogs on startup. There's no switch for changelogs yet, but you can disable the package list update by setting Aptitude::Update-On-Startup to false.

The main change in this release is the new GTK+ frontend, designed and implemented by Obey Arthur Liu with funding from the 2008 edition of Google's Summer of Code.

The new frontend is is an effort to bring some of the design principles of the curses frontend to a GUI environment, while also exploiting the unique features a GUI gives us and exploring ways to deal with changes in the environment in the nine years since aptitude was first designed. For instance, it is no longer reasonable for the user to actually read the entire package list (when I first installed Debian, you could read through the whole package list in a single sitting). So instead of basing the interface around a list of all the packages, we based it around the ability to search for the packages you're interested in.

This version of aptitude also introduces Xapian searching:

daniel@emurlahn:~$ aptitude search "apt package manager"
i   apt                                  - Advanced front-end for dpkg
p   apt-dater                            - terminal-based remote package update manager
p   apt-dater-dbg                        - terminal-based remote package update manager (d
i   aptitude                             - terminal-based package manager
i   aptitude-dbg                         - Debug symbols for the aptitude package manager
p   createrepo                           - generates the metadata necessary for a RPM pack
p   gnome-apt                            - graphical package manager
p   smartpm                              - An alternative package manager that works with
p   smartpm-core                         - An alternative package manager that works with
i   synaptic                             - Graphical package manager
i A update-manager-core                  - APT update manager core functionality

You might ask why I didn't search for just package manager. The reason is simple: aptitude doesn't yet sort by relevance, and that second search gave me screenfuls of packages whose description contains both package and manager, including addressmanager.app (a PIM for GNUstep), compiz-gtk (a piece of eye candy), and wterm (an X terminal emulator). However, it is worth noting that Xapian searches are fully integrated into the aptitude search language, so they can be combined with non-Xapian search terms in just the way you would expect:

daniel@emurlahn:~$ aptitude search "?installed apt package manager"
i   apt                                  - Advanced front-end for dpkg
i   aptitude                             - terminal-based package manager
i   aptitude-dbg                         - Debug symbols for the aptitude package manager
i   synaptic                             - Graphical package manager
i A update-manager-core                  - APT update manager core functionality

So, all the basic functionality that the GUI version needs is in place; the next step is to start polishing it and filling in the gaps that are left. And, of course, suggestions and bug reports are welcome, so we know where the rough spots and the gaps are. Please send your comments to aptitude-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org so that they are part of the public record and so that people besides me can read them. :-)

Happy package managing!