GNUpdate is an open source, universal package management system. What does this mean? Well for starters, it will allow RedHat users to install debian packages, Debian users to install RedHat packages, and so on. It does this through the libpackman library, which provides a single API for accessing multiple package formats and package databases.

GNUpdate provides its own package database, composed of B+Trees, hashtables, and index files for the various methods of searching. It is constructed with expandability in mind. In several cases, the GNUpdate database is faster than even the RPM database.

Users may still use their existing package database for any operation, though some future features of GNUpdate will only work with its own package database. An existing package database can be converted to a GNUpdate package database by using gpkg.

GNUpdate is also capable of automatically updating packages without the need to download them manually. It can do this from a command line tool (gpkg), or by using the graphical GNUpdate package manager (gnupdate). It queries online package databases via the libpql (Package Query Language) library. This library provides a simple interface for querying package database servers, and can be used by any application to provide self-upgrading functionality.

One of the features that I think will be invaluable to many developers is GNUpdate's (planned) ability to update a local CVS repository, scan for package information files (RPM .spec files, for example), compile, install, and then update the local database. GNUpdate will be able to do the same with source tarballs.

Another planned feature for developers is the capability to convert package files to other formats, providing the developer the option of providing packages of their software to multiple Linux distributions. This will come as a side-effect of libpackman's multi-package access/modification abilities.

All GNUpdate libraries are licensed under the LGPL, and the GNUpdate front-end tools and server are under the GPL.

If you plan on using one of the GNUpdate components in your project, feel free to e-mail me at chipx86 at gnupdate dot org and let me know about your project.