--> APT's New Version <--
After much discussion, the deity team has now picked an official
stanza on what a version number says about the stability and quality
of a software product:
16 years after the initial announcement[0] we are pleased to announce
apt in version "1.0.0.0b" as a birthday present to everyone caring
deeply about numbers.
Everyone else will find in this beta^Wbinary release the fulfilment of
a longstanding dream: /usr/bin/apt provided by apt rather than java.
We want to thank the java community for deprecating their "Annotation
Processing Tool" a long time ago and the java maintainers for
preparing the takeover by us.
Our newest addition to the apt family is intended as a user interface
and comes therefore bundled with a bunch of configuration and
interface changes compared to its siblings – but we don't want to blow
the surprise, so play with it for yourself! No worries through,
/usr/bin/apt-* will keep working just as before.
But a word of caution: the "/usr/bin/apt" binary is still work in
progress, so now is the time to speak up if you miss features or find
bugs and patch the hell out of/into it for a nice Debian
freeze&release in November. :)
16 years old and still ever changing: Not even the name remains
stable. What used to be called "deity" was announced as "Apt", first
released as "APT" [1], shipped as "apt-get" and "apt-cache",
interpreted as "A Package Tool" and "Advanced Package Tool" and is now
also available as "apt" … But the initial wisdom holds: "it's still a
good word in its own right". And this word has surely influenced the
way we manage our software on phones, servers and space stations. It
also still stirs envy among users and developers outside the Debian
universe – and rightly so! ;)
This would not have been possible without contributions by hundreds of
people in code, documentation, translations, bugreports and support!
Thank YOU for all this work – and please keep it coming! :)
A very special thanks also goes out to the original authors: Your
little baby is now a sweet teenager who can legally drink beer! [2]
Who would have guessed that 16 years ago? Do you remember what you did
on the first April in 1998? What is the first thing you thought while
reading this mail? And most important of all: Have you mooed today?
It is "Sweet 16"-APT-1.0-Release-Partytime, so feel free to join the
fun and tell us your answers or anything else you want to share!
deity@lists.debian.org and #debian-apt are waiting for you.
Best regards and: Moo!
Your APT Development Team
[0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1998/04/msg00027.html
[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1998/04/msg00274.html
[2] based on current team member origins. Your mileage may vary.
We recommend tea (with a lacing of milk maybe) while working apt
though. Super cow recommends that you smash some milk instead.
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