apt-get update only for a specific repository

Question

When I add a ppa and I want to install some of its content is quite annoying to re-update all my apt list using apt-get update

Is it instead possible to only sync the content of a given repository?

Answer 1

yes, apt-get can do that, and can do it in a nice way.

1.Append following to ~/.bash_funcs

update-repo() {
sudo apt-get update -o Dir::Etc::sourcelist="sources.list.d/$1" \
-o Dir::Etc::sourceparts="-" -o APT::Get::List-Cleanup="0"    
}

2.Append following to ~/.bashrc

if [ -f $HOME/.bash_funcs ]; then
.  $HOME/.bash_funcs
fi

3.Append following to ~/.bash_completion

# Debian user-defined completion                             -*- shell-script -*-

_ppa_lists(){
    local cur
    _init_completion || return

    COMPREPLY=( $( find /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ -name "*$cur*.list" \
-exec basename {} \; 2> /dev/null ) )
    return 0
} &&
complete -F _ppa_lists update-repo

4.Then source the files

. ~/.bashrc
. ~/.bash_completion

5.Done and start to fire it

update-repo <tab> <tab>

You can update a single ppa repository without having to update whole apt source, with implement of bash-completion.

Answer 2

If the repository is configured in a specific file in the directory /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, say myrepo.list, you can update that single repository with the command:

sudo apt-get update -o Dir::Etc::sourcelist="sources.list.d/myrepo.list" \
    -o Dir::Etc::sourceparts="-" -o APT::Get::List-Cleanup="0"

Nevertheless this is not very convenient.
This can be simplified defining a bash function

update_repo() {
    sudo apt-get update -o Dir::Etc::sourcelist="sources.list.d/$1.list" \
        -o Dir::Etc::sourceparts="-" -o APT::Get::List-Cleanup="0"
}

so that you can simply run

update_repo myrepo

Answer 3

No, you need to update the entire database in order to ensure that you don't get into problems. Packages can depend on packages in other archives, so you really need to know the status of all archives. However, if no changes have been made to the archive since you last updated it, then it'll know that and it won't update it again.

Answer 4

Y PPA Manager comes with a command line tool called "update-ppa" that lets you update a single PPA.

For example: "sudo update-ppa ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8"

Also, when adding a PPA through Y PPA Manager, the PPA source is automatically updated (only for that PPA). In a future version, there's going to be a GUI to manually update single PPAs as well.

More information about Y PPA Manager, HERE.

Answer 5

I had this problem also and found no program or way to do this as flexibly as I wanted. So I wrote a program using libapt's python binding. It ended up being very similar to enzotib's solution but allowing for arbitrary files and specifying repository lines on the command line.

See my blog post at: http://archimedesden.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/updating-selected-debianubuntu-repositories/