APT 3.3.3 is now available as a small maintenance update introducing the first parts of a new interactive help system for Debian’s command-line package management tools.
The main change in this release is the new interactive help output for apt(8). APT now has a declarative option help printer and command-specific help texts to help users better understand the available options for each operation.
help output has been improved so that declarative options now appear directly in command-specific help. Also, option descriptions are now marked for translation, making the help system more useful for users who prefer languages other than English.
APT 3.3.3 also updates how mirror fan-out is calculated. Now, instead of matching the number of files, the fan-out grows with the square root of the file count. This change helps keep behavior balanced as file numbers grow and prevents too much parallelization during large operations.
Finally, this release also fixes fuzzy entries in the Ukrainian translation from APT 3.3.2 and improves consistency in terminology.
For more details, see the changelog.
APT 3.3.3 is currently in Debian Unstable, where new package versions are tested before migrating further through Debian’s development process.
