6.3 Wajig Quick Start

Wajig expects a command and will call upon other GNU/Linux tools to perform the command. It is run as a normal user, but once a privileged command is required it will use sudo and likely request for the user’s password. Using sudo requires a little setting up as described below in Section @ref(wajig.sudo).

Try the help command for basic instructions:

$ wajig help
usage: wajig [-h] [-V] <command> <options> <args>

Unified package management front-end for Debian/Ubuntu.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help     show this help message and exit
  -V, --version  show wajig version

'wajig commands' to display available commands.
'wajig <command> --help' for command sepcific help.
'wajig doc | most' to display a tutorial.

See what's happening with --teach or --noop.

Please direct queries to https://stackoverflow.com/ and tag as wajig.

Typical work flows might involve these commands:

$ wajig update               (= apt update)
$ wajig upgrade              (= apt-get upgrade)
$ wajig install most         (= apt install most)
$ wajig new                  (list new packages since last update)
$ wajig newupgrades          (list packages upgraded since last update)
$ wajig toupgrade            (list all packages to be upgraded) 
$ wajig updatealts editor    (update the default "editor")
$ wajig restart apache       (restart the apache daemon)
$ wajig listfiles less       (list the files supplied by the "less" pkg)
$ wajig whichpkg stdio.h     (what package supplies this header file)
$ wajig whatis rats          (one line description of the package "rats")
$ wajig orphans              (list libraries not required by other pkgs)

Many users of wajig will update their systems daily with the following commands:

wajig update
wajig distupgrade

This can be put into a crontab entry and so automatically update your system daily (see Section 6.7). In that case be sure to include --yes so that no interaction with a user is required:

wajig update; wajig distupgrade --yes


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