[osgeo4w-dev] major milestone: apt eats apt!

[Matt Wilkie]

Hi Folks,

*A major milestone reached, Apt 
<http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/pkg-apt> eats Apt!*

<http://www.maphew.com/Projects/appy#>Last night I completed building *a 
package of apt.exe can upgrade itself*. This means, I think, that now 
apt should be able to replace any and all packages in Osgeo4W in one go 
including python. There is much left to do, it's only been tested on two 
computers so far, and it consumes more diskspace and bandwidth than I 
think it should, but it works!

To try it out, point your existing apt or o4w setup program (see 
/Testing Repository /at end of this page 
<http://trac.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/wiki/RequiresPython>) at 
http://download.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/testing/ and upgrade away.

    apt --mirror http://download.osgeo.org/osgeo4w/testing/ update
    apt new
    apt upgrade

After this running apt with no parameters should yield the usual help 
page with a version number at the top that resembles:

    -={ Id: apt.py 1179 2011-09-01 12:42:24Z maphew }=-

    apt [OPTION]... COMMAND [PACKAGE]...

If the first line is just [option] etc. the new apt.exe hasn't been 
activated. Running%osgeo4w_root%\bin\apt.bat should fix that. If not 
please let me know.

For this who don't know, apt is portable. Grab apt.exe 
<http://maphew.googlecode.com/files/apt-r1179.exe>, dump it any 
directory whatsoever, initialize the osgeo4w_root variable and install away:

    D:\>
    rename apt-r1179.exe apt.exe
    set osgeo4w_root=X:\o4w
    apt setup
    apt available
    apt install shell ...

However to replace itself you need some extra magic from the apt 
package, so add the following (and then you are free to remove the .exe 
you started with).

    apt install apt

Feedback is welcome. I know some things are more complicated than they 
should or need to be, but hey I don't know very much about this 
programming stuff ;-)

cheers,

-matt
(who still can't believe this thing actually /works!/)