APT sources.list One-Line Format versus DEB822-Style Format

Development
1

ONE-LINE-STYLE FORMAT

deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/derivative.asc] https://deb.kicksecure.com bookworm main contrib non-free

shell command:

echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/derivative.asc] https://deb.kicksecure.com bookworm main contrib non-free" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/derivative.list

DEB822-STYLE FORMAT

Uris: https://deb.kicksecure.com
Types: deb deb-src
Suites: bullseye
Components: main contrib non-free
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/derivative.asc

shell command:

echo "\
Uris: https://deb.kicksecure.com
Types: deb deb-src
Suites: bookworm
Components: main contrib non-free
Signed-By: /usr/share/keyrings/derivative.asc
" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/derivative.list

DEB822 format is

  • supported since Debian bookworm,
  • used by extrepo,
  • supported by mmdebstrap.

In my opinion, the resulting configuration files /etc/apt/sources.list.d look nicer in DEB822 format. Seems easier to modify.

However, in manual repository adding instructions, one-line style format seems easier for copy and paste.

2

Probably best to avoid implementing this until Debian moves to DEB822 format by default, if that ever happens. There’s no rush in doing this at all.

3

According to https://www.reddit.com/r/debian/comments/1ij82ce/debian_13_trixie_introduced_deb822_heres_what_you/ in Debian trixie there is:

sudo apt modernize-sources

That might be helpful.

4

I’d wait to do this until Trixie. Both Ubuntu and Debian didn’t move to it by default at first, and I worry it could cause problems if we try to move existing systems to this format for consistency. Once we migrate to Trixie, this would probably be a good idea. Ubuntu is using this by default since at least 24.04.

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