Based on a discussion at UDS-Q a simple command is desired to be able to add/enable "multiverse" and/or "-backports" in the apt repositories on a system.
Background: Right now, it is trivial to add a PPA to the apt sources using the apt-add-repository command. For example, I can tell somebody on IRC/email/blog to run these commands:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:awstools-dev/awstools &&
sudo apt-get update &&
sudo apt-get install elbcli
Presto! They have the correct package installed and this works on a number of different Ubuntu releases.
Unfortunately, it is much more common to point people to the more popular "multiverse" (and occasionally "-backports") sections of the standard apt repositories, but it is much more difficult to describe how to enable these.
For example, to install the ec2-api-tools currently available in multiverse, I have to provide non-standard and confusing instructions like:
# Enable "multiverse" in your apt sources using something like
sudo perl -pi -e \
'next if /-backports/; s/^# (deb.* multiverse)$/$1/' /etc/apt/sources.list
# unless you're on an older version of Ubuntu which has a different sources.list
# format, in which case you might need to use something like:
sudo perl -pi -e 's%(universe)$%$1 multiverse%' /etc/apt/sources.list
# then
sudo apt-get update &&
sudo apt-get install ec2-api-tools
I would much rather be able to simply say something like:
sudo apt-add-source multiverse &&
sudo apt-get update &&
sudo apt-get install ec2-api-tools
(I don't care about the name of the tool. I just want it to be easy to provide in instructions.)
In addition to "multiverse" it would be nice to support "-backports" and perhaps "partner".
Ideally, this would be available for all active Ubuntu releases, but getting it in going forward would be a good start.
ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: apt 0.8.16~exp12ubuntu10
ProcVersionSignature: User Name 3.2.0-23.36-virtual 3.2.14
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-23-virtual x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.0.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed May 9 21:50:13 2012
Ec2AMI: ami-a29943cb
Ec2AMIManifest: (unknown)
Ec2AvailabilityZone: us-east-1a
Ec2InstanceType: m1.small
Ec2Kernel: aki-825ea7eb
Ec2Ramdisk: unavailable
ProcEnviron:
TERM=xterm
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: apt
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
Reassigned to software-properties as that is where the apt-add-repository command is, and it seems to make sense to have them in the same place.