SlackRoll v14

SlackRoll project is a package or update manager for Slackware systems. It does not provide dependency checking and uses pkgtools to install or upgrade packages. Its designed to work with official mirrors. If you have a Slackware system mainly composed of official packages and a handful of unofficial packages, SlackRoll can help you manage it and keep in touch with the remote tree. It tries to know when new packages appear, when packages are removed and when packages are upgraded.

Before you start

So you have decided to try SlackRoll. Let me introduce a few concepts so you dont get lost.

SlackRoll works with the current directory. It doesnt work with a fixed system directory like, lets say, /var/SlackRoll. You can use /var/SlackRoll if you want. You have to choose a directory and cd to it before running the program. Want to use something inside /var? Inside /root? Inside /media? Whatever floats your boat.
In the following text Im going to be talking about packages. For package, we are going to understand a named piece of software, without having any specific version unless I explicitly mention it. A package can be bash or kdewebdev or gcc-gfortran, for example.

Each package is in one of several possible states. The program tries to keep a persistent "database" that associates each package with its state. When it runs, it analyzes the list of packages present in your system, the list of remote packages and tries to keep the persistent database updated by introducing new entries, deleting old ones and changing the state of some of those entries.