Package versions

July 26, 2015 ยท View on GitHub

For stability and QA, there is only a fixed version of each software per Ubuntu version, except for occasional:

  • updates
  • security
  • backports

updates. Those updates normally only touch critical components, and even after an update it is still possible that a more recent version of Ubuntu will have a more recent version of the software.

Therefore, the most flexible way of getting updated version of software are PPAs.

Security

Hot-fixes that must be updated quickly.

Updates

Simply updates, not yet in another version.

Enabled by default.

Proposed

Proposed for updates, but not yet tested.

Disabled by default.

Backports

Updates that come from a new release and were enabled to older systems.

Enabled by default.

Version naming

http://serverfault.com/questions/604541/debian-packages-version-convention/708569#708569

Do a dpkg -l and understand every version name.

Format:

<name>_<version>-<ubuntu-version>_<architecture>

Samples:

hello_2.8-4_amd64
^^^^^ ^^^ ^ ^^^^^
1     2   3 4

gdb-dbg_7.9-1ubuntu1_amd64.deb
^^^^^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^
1       2   3        4

Those version strings are used everywhere to uniquely identify packages, e.g.:

Meaning of each field:

  1. unique package name

  2. version

  3. Debian and Ubuntu versions, incremented by Debian and Ubuntu patches.

    http://askubuntu.com/questions/620533/how-does-ubuntu-name-packages

  4. architecture. Common values:

    • all
    • i386
    • amd64

This package has a ubuntu1 part of the version: <http://askubuntu.com/questions/620533/how-does-ubuntu-name-packages