How to add repository from shell in Debian?

Question

In Ubuntu one can add a repository via following command -

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair

As Ubuntu is based on Debian code base, I was expecting that the same would work in Debian too, but it doesn't.

• What is the reason for this?
• Is there some other shell command I can use to achieve the same?

Note: I know I can edit /etc/apt/sources.list, but I want to achieve this from the shell. I also want to know why the same command won't work when the code base is the same.

Solution 1

Debian Jessie and later (2014-)

As pointed out by @voltagex in the comments, it can now be found in the software-properties-common package:

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

---

Debian Wheezy and earlier:

The program add-apt-repository is available in Debian. It's in the python-software-properties package:

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties

It was added to that package in version 0.75. The current version in Debian Stable ('squeeze") is 0.60, so it doesn't have it. The version currently in Debian Testing ("wheezy") is 0.82.7.1debian1, so it's available there.

Solution 2

Assuming you're running a non-ancient version of Debian (Etch or later), you can just drop a file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ The file name must end with .list; Debian Stretch (not yet released) will likely add .sources with a different format.

The format is the same as the main sources.list file.

The advantage is, especially if this is for some software you're distributing, you don't have to worry merging your changes into a possibly-edited /etc/apt/sources.list file (especially hard to deal with if your program is uninstalled). You can use dpkg conffile support to put the file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/.

Solution 3

add-apt-repository can now be found in the software-properties-common package.

Solution 4

Ubuntu is based on Debian but includes things Debian doesn't (and in turn are often incorporated into Debian later). The add-apt-repository command is an example which was included in Ubuntu first.

The add-apt-repository actually just executes a couple of commands to add the repository:

• append the repository to /etc/apt/sources.list
• add the repository key to the machine.

A script that sort of does the same that can be found here is quoted below

#!/bin/bash
if [ $# -eq 1 ]
NM=$(uname -a && date)
NAME=$(echo $NM | md5sum | cut -f1 -d" ")
then
    ppa_name=$(echo "$1" | cut -d":" -f2 -s)
    if [ -z "$ppa_name" ]
    then
        echo "PPA name not found"
        echo "Utility to add PPA repositories in your debian machine"
        echo "$0 ppa:user/ppa-name"
    else
        echo "$ppa_name"
        echo "deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/$ppa_name/ubuntu lucid main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
        apt-get update >> /dev/null 2> /tmp/${NAME}_apt_add_key.txt
        key=$(cat /tmp/${NAME}_apt_add_key.txt | cut -d":" -f6 | cut -d" " -f3)
        apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys $key
        rm -rf /tmp/${NAME}_apt_add_key.txt
    fi
else
    echo "Utility to add PPA repositories in your debian machine"
    echo "$0 ppa:user/ppa-name"
fi

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Comments

[Gilles 'SO- stop being evil']

sources.list.d exists since etch, I think.

[Adam Baxter]

At least in sid, the add-apt-repository script seems to have moved to software-properties-common

[beeender]

Yeah, but apt-add-repository takes care of things like translating "ppa:" to an http://ppa.launchpad... type, and to download and install the repository key so that packages are not treated as suspicious

[gatopeich]

Version 0.92 of python-software-properties here, and (again) missing :-(

[cheshirecatalyst]

See the comment above yours -- it's now in software-properties-common

[peterretief]

had hassles updating though

[derobert]

@Gilles I think you're right—it isn't on a Sarge machine I have, and is on an Etch machine.

[Mike D]

@rbaleksandar this is not in all distros because it has a lot of extra things you may not want, especially in docker. Since the end goal of this task is to add something to /etc/apt/sources.list, you might look at @Goez 's answer in this question.

[Francis Rodrigues]

It's not recommended to use ppa repo in your Debian distro. There's no control about installations making that.