apt upgrade CLI

Lightweight front-end to selectively upgrade packages on Debian. Started as a workaround for apt upgrade's refusal to take a list of packages as arguments. Manually-installed status (apt-mark) is preserved — packages remain autoremovable if they were so before.

Usage

All arguments are optional. aptup calls $APTUP_EDITOR or $EDITOR to select upgradable packages as reported by apt list --upgradable (none selected by default, or all with --all). Commented lines (starting with #) are ignored. Uncomment, re-comment and/or delete lines as appropriate, then save and exit.

--dialog switches the front-end TUI to dialog (if installed). Package-name arguments filter upgradable packages to only those supplied (if none: all installed packages are checked).

Usage hints for vim:

• in normal mode, go to column 1 and type <C-V> to enter block-visual mode; by selecting and deleting (x) the initial #, you can easily uncomment ranges of lines.
• in --all mode, you can delete some lines matching a regex with :g/PATTERN/d, or some non-matching lines with :v/PATTERN/d. For example, use security as the PATTERN.

aptup --help:

Usage: aptup [OPTION]... [PKG]...

Options:
  -u, --update        run apt update first
  --all               pre-select all packages for update
  --dialog            use "dialog" as front-end
  --editor, -e        use editor as front-end (default)
  -o APT_KEY=VAL ..   configure apt

*Editor selection*
  aptup tries $APTUP_EDITOR, $EDITOR, Debian sensible-editor, nano, vim.

Copyright

Alin Mr <almr.oss@outlook.com> / MIT license