Copyright (C) 2003-2007 Jason Woodward <woodwardj at jaos dot org>

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU Library General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.



Table of Contents:
 1. Features
 2. Requirements
 3. Installation
 4. slapt-getrc
 5. Getting started
 6. Troubleshooting
 7. Thanks and contributions



 1. Features

    slapt-get tries to emulate Debian's apt-get as closely as possible.

    * uses native Slackware tools (installpkg, upgradepkg, and removepkg)
    * supports multiple package sources (including linuxpackages.net)
    * cache data concerning packages and updates from package sources
    * supports sources from ftp, ftps, http, https, file:/// and more (libcurl)
    * resumes broken downloads and will verify package integrity with MD5
      checksum
    * show packages that are available (from cached data) and installed
    * search package listing using POSIX and extended regular expressions
      by package name, location, and description
    * retrieve, install, and remove packages by name or by specific version
    * retrieve and apply updates
    * upgrade from one Slackware release to another in a few simple steps
    * show description of packages, including mirror location, version, size,
      dependencies (where available), conflicts (where available), suggestions
      (where available), description, installation status, and the package
      changelog entry (where available).
    * exclude (hold) packages from upgrades, by name or by regular expression
    * transaction engine for install, remove, and upgrades, reporting concise
      information on what is to be done, ensuring each step happens correctly
    * "compare package version" algorithm to prevent downgrades
    * recursive dependency resolution using slack-required meta-data (see FAQ)
      supporting hard, soft, and conditional dependencies
    * package conflict resolution using slack-conflicts meta-data (see FAQ)
    * package suggestion support for complimentary packages (see FAQ)
    * Package data download robustness, only writing changes if all sources
      download successfully as well as only downloading those sources that
      have changed since the last download
    * i18n support via GNU gettext with over 24 language translations
    * extremely fast and easy to script with



 2. Requirements

    slapt-get requires Slackware-9.0 or better, due to glibc and openssl
    updates.  You can also use slapt-get under Slackware 8.1 if you
    upgrade glibc-solibs and openssl from Slackware 9.0, or if slapt-get
    is built statically linked.

    The following packages are required to build slapt-get from source:
    make, gcc, curl, glibc, kernel-headers, binutils, zlib, gettext-tools,
    and openssl.

    If gpgpme is installed, slapt-get can be built with support
    for signature verification with gnupg. gpgme requires libgpg-error.

    The unit tests in t/ require check (http://check.sourceforge.net/).



 3. Installation

    See INSTALL.



 4. slapt-getrc

    The slapt-getrc file consists currently of the following keys:
     SOURCE
     WORKINGDIR
     EXCLUDE

    Choose a mirror from the slackware.com mirror list at
    http://www.slackware.com/getslack/

    * SOURCE must be a path to a valid Slackware release directory,
    or a source such as linuxpackages.net (see example within rc).
    All that is required is the PACKAGES.TXT (see FAQ entry #17)
    and CHECKSUMS.md5.  Multiple sources can be defined.

      NOTE: It is not recommended to mix 3rd party package sources
            with the official on production servers.  Sometimes 
            third party sources contain the same packages as the
            official mirrors. Third party packages might not be
            as rigorously tested as official packages.

    * WORKINGDIR will hold the package data and downloaded packages.
      This directory will be created automatically as permissions
      allow.

    * EXCLUDE is a comma separated list of packages you want excluded from
    updating. This can be the package name, or a extended POSIX regex.
    For example, to exclude Dropline, use .*-[0-9]dl$.  See regex(7).



 5. Getting started

    After installing and customizing the slapt-getrc configuration file,
    you need to run slapt-get with the --update option to download the
    package data available from all the package sources you specified within
    the slapt-getrc file.

    Once this is done, you can use the following options:

    * --upgrade to upgrade your installed packages.
    * --dist-upgrade to upgrade to a newer release (Please refer to the FAQ
      concerning dist-upgrade prior to running the command).
    * --search to locate packages of interest by the package name, disk set,
      or version.  This supports POSIX and extended regular expressions.
    * --install to install a package.  If the package is already installed it
      will be upgraded.
    * --list to see all the packages available from the package sources you
      specified within the slapt-getrc configuration file.
    * --installed to list all the packages you already have installed.
    * --remove to remove packages.
    * --show to show information about packages.
    * --clean to remove all downloaded packages from the local cache.
    * --autoclean to remove packages from local cache that are no longer
      available on the package sources specified in the slapt-getrc file.
    * --remove-obsolete along with --remove or --dist-upgrade will mark
      all non-downloadable packages for removal.
      



 6. Troubleshooting

   Probably some bugs.  Email bug reports to me:
    Jason Woodward <woodwardj at jaos dot org>

   or directly to the mailing lists:
    slapt-get-user at software dot jaos dot org
    slapt-get-devel at software dot jaos dot org

   Make sure --update is ran once initially and the data file (package_data)
   is good.

   Some mirrors are incomplete and the downloaded file is actually HTML
   specifying the web servers error message.  MD5 checking has been 
   incorporated in order to alleviate this problem.

   Please do not add redundant mirror locations to the same release.  Mirror
   fall back is not implemented (see FAQ #50).  Also, any time the source url(s)
   are changed, slapt-get --update must be run to update the local cache.

   If you are getting segfaults, add -g to CFLAGS in the Makefile, change the
   DEBUG define in src/main.h to 1, and rebuild ( make clean && make ).  Run
   in gdb and let me know via email where the fault happens.

   Run the test suite and report any failing tests to the mailing list.

   See the FAQ for more info.

 7. Thanks and contributions

   John Babiak <johnb at vectorlinux dot com> is the VectorLinux slapt-get
   maintainer.

   Big thanks to Dan Barber <danb at mojolin dot com> for his insight and help
   with documentation suggestions and feature requests.

   Thanks to James Simmons over at linuxpackages.net for his interest, support,
   and ideas.

   nixon <nixon at klub dot chip dot pl> and simon
   <ssiimm at poczta dot onet dot pl> authored the Polish translation.  With
   updates by Paul Blazejowski <paulb at blazebox dot homeip dot net>, and
   Piotr Simon <sajmon at tenboard dot com>.

   Arnaldo de Moraes Pereira <arnaldo at sp-dhn dot com dot br> authored the
   Brazilian Portuguese translation.

   Michiel H. <myself at mhil dot net> authored the Dutch translation.

   Joran Kvalvaag <jk at nerdworks dot org> authored the Norwegian translation.

   Ruben <ruben at snpp dot com dot ar> authored the Latin American and Spanish
   translations.

   Francesco Gigli <jaramir at slack dot it> authored the Italian translation.

   Joel Bjurman <ypolt at lediga dot st> authored the Swedish translation.

   Savvas Efstratiadis <pigouinos at mailworks dot org> authored the Greek
   translation.

   Niklas Volbers <mithrandir42 at web dot de> authored the German translation.

   Oto Petrik <oto.petrik at centrum dot cz > authored the Czech translation.

   Piotr Simon <sajmon at tenboard dot com> created the HTML version of the FAQ.

   Miguel Santinho <info at Simplicidade dot com> authored the Portuguese_Portugal
   translation.
 
   Vu Nguyen (vncasper at yahoo dot com) authored the Vietnamese translation.

   publikum at users dot sourceforge dot net authored the Slovenian translation.

   Verachten Bruno <gounthar at gmail dot com> authored the French translation.

   freerock <freerock at gmail dot com> contributed the DESTDIR support for the makefile.

   Erik Gyepes <depi at depi dot sk> contributed the Slovak translation.

   sin of the DeepStyle team <digitalhunger at gmail dot com> contributed the Russian and
   Unkrainian translations, with updates from <ru at li dot org>.

   Victor Keranov <victor_keranov at mail dot bg> contributed the Bulgarian translation.

   Kemas Antonius <kyantonius at kyantonius dot com> contributed the Indonesian translation.

   S_A <shin1 dot abe at nifty dot com> contributed the Japanese translation.

   Yang Jinsong <shannleon at gmail dot com> contributed the simplified Chinese translation.

   Bekir SONAT <corlinux at gmail dot com> contributed the Turkish translation.

