Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

Y PPA Manager

Y PPA Manager is a GUI tool to add, remove, purge, list and search for Launchpad PPAs.

Today I've released a new Y PPA Manager version that adds a new feature: deep search. The regular Y PPA Manager search displays all the PPAs that the Launchpad search returns for the word you search for - that includes PPAs that don't have packages for your Ubuntu version, PPAs that only have the searched keyword in the description as well as PPAs in which that package was available but it has been removed recently.


Deep search

The new "deep search" works like this:
  • it scans all the PPAs returned by the Launchpad search and only displays the PPAs that have the exact package you've searched for available at the time you've performed the search
  • the Y PPA Manager displays the exact version for the package you've searched for as well as the PPA in which that package can be found in one place so you don't have to check the packages in each PPA to know the version of the packages returned by the search
  • "deep search" will only return packages available for your Ubuntu version (or whatever version you've specified in the config file)

Please note that the "deep search", just like the regular search makes use of the Launchpad PPA search so if Launchpad doesn't find a certain PPA, Y PPA Manager won't list it either. There's nothing I can do about this.


But enough talk. Here is a screenshot with an example Y PPA Manager deep search results for "nautilus":

Y PPA Manager deep search

As you can see, the old regular search actions are still available: you can add the PPA, perform a new search or list the packages in a PPA to get a better idea of what's inside that PPA:

PPA Packages


Because of the way the "deep search" works, it takes more then a regular search to complete so you may still use the regular search for quicker results. Also, you must enter the exact package name when using the "deep search" feature. But of course, the results will be more accurate and it's a lot easier to see the version (no extra clicks required) using the deep search.


Install Y PPA Manager

Try it for yourself! Add the Y PPA Manager PPA and install it in Ubuntu Karmic, Lucid, Maverick and Natty (also works in Linux Mint) using the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/y-ppa-manager
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install y-ppa-manager


Oh, there's one more feature I've implemented a while back but I forgot to tell you about it: when adding a PPA using Y PPA Manager, the GPG key is imported on port 80 so if you're behind a firewall you won't get GPG key errors anymore (this only works for the new PPAs you add - for the already added PPAs, use Lauchpad Getkeys)!

For more info on Y PPA Manager, see THIS post and the Y PPA Manager Launchpad page. A video with Y PPA Manager is available in THIS post.


Report any bugs you may find @ Launchpad.