I’ve been making some decent progress on apt-checkpoint over the last few days. I’m using the python module apt_pkg to interface with the packages. I want to keep this package as lightweight as possible, and I think it’s a fair assumption to make that Python will be available “out of the box” on most Debian systems. Plus, Python is a nice language. I still favor C#, but Mono isn’t quite as widely used yet and for a tool like this, I think Python is a better fit.

My first goal was to get apt-checkpoint working, and it is now functional enough for me to do more testing. With the checkpoint generated, I was able to start working on apt-diff. I ran apt-checkpoint, apt-get install apache, and then apt-diff, which I’ve showed below:

stone@durin:~/src/apt-checkpoint$ ./apt-diff.py
Reading Package Lists… Done
Building Dependency Tree… Done
Package not found in checkpoint but installed: apache

So far, so good. I am able to detect a new package has been installed since the last checkpoint. I need to test version checking and work out the logic for apt-diff, but I’m pleased with the progress so far. At this rate, I should be ready to release something in a few weeks.