What is the difference between add-apt-repository & apt-add-repository?

Question

Difference between add-apt-repository & apt-add-repository ?

first time to know that there is a apt-add-repository command i always see it add-apt-repository, it is good as i always use command in the form of sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade and apt-add-repository has the same form (Good) — Black Block, Nov 28 '11 at 23:02
Is there a corresponding command for the newer apt command? I know there is apt edit-sources which lets one edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file with a text editor. But is there a quick way to add/remove sources with just the apt command? — mbigras, Feb 22 '17 at 19:15

score 47 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '11 at 18:12

47

They're the same command, someone just added the inverse because people kept mixing the command up and typing it wrong.

answered Nov 28 '11 at 18:12

Jorge Castro

score 29 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 28 '11 at 20:01

29

An easy way to find this out would have been:

minibun:~> ls -l `which apt-add-repository`
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 18 2011-08-26 15:36 /usr/bin/apt-add-repository -> add-apt-repository

You can see that apt-add-repository is simply a symlink to add-apt-repository :)

edited Nov 28 '11 at 20:01

dcharles

answered Nov 28 '11 at 18:29

Caesium

4

This doesn't prove anything: e.g. /usr/bin/xzcat is a symlink to xz, but works quite differently. – Ruslan Feb 20 '16 at 06:16
@Ruslan xzcat is equivalent to xz --decompress --stdout. – Shayan Mar 07 '18 at 11:06
2

@Shayan exactly, and my point was that the mere fact that a name is a symlink to something doesn't prove that the functionality between two names is identical. – Ruslan Mar 07 '18 at 11:30
@Ruslan Yep, I added it for reference so others can see why it's different :) – Shayan Mar 07 '18 at 11:47

2 Answers2