Following the release earlier this year of the big APT 3.0 package manager tool release, APT 3.1 was tagged today as another step forward to this key tool on Debian-based Linux distributions.
APT 3.0 introduced a new package solver and on Ubuntu with APT 3.1 that new solver is now used by default. The “3.0 solver” is now deemed to be in good enough shape for using by default on Ubuntu Linux moving forward for the CLI tools.
APT 3.1 also introduces the “apt why” and “apt why-not” sub-commands. These are fairly similar to the Aptitude commands and will produce a solver trace for indicating why a particular package management decision was taken. APT 3.1 also adds new “Include” and “Exclude” options for limiting the packages used from a particular repository.
APT 3.1 also adds HTTPS support to dselect and brings a variety of other bug fixes and enhancements. APT 3.1 is now available via Debian Experimental. More details on today’s APT 3.1 release via tracker.debian.org.
