text: aptly 0.5 has been released today. It is available for download as binary executables or from Debian repository:
  
  deb http://repo.aptly.info/ squeeze main
  
  When installing from repository, don't forget to import key used to sign the release:
  
  $ gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 2A194991 $ gpg -a --export 2A194991 | sudo apt-key add -
  
  Most important new features are:
  
  Local Repository Publishing Local repositories could be used in two ways: test new versions of software
  
  provide stable distribution of new versions For the second case, it is best to create snapshots of local repositories and publish them. However, when testing out new versions, there isn't much sense in creating snapshot each time repository is updated. So aptly since version 0.5 supports direct publishing of repositories. Moreover, when local repository is updated, published repository could be updated as well in one step. When local repository is created, default publishing options (distribution and component) could be specified, so that these options don't need to be specified when publishing: aptly repo create -distribution=wheezy testing-wheezy aptly repo add -remove-files testing-wheezy incoming/*.deb aptly publish repo testing-wheezy ... aptly repo add -remove-files testing-wheezy incoming/*.deb aptly publish update wheezy
  
  Published Snapshot Switching Snapshot is a way to make package environment stable and repeatable, but from time to time new snapshots are created that contain new versions of software. To publish new version of snapshot, aptly before 0.5 required old snapshot to be unpublished and new snapshot to be published again. During this process, repository would be unusable. New feature allows to "switch" snapshots in published repository. aptly would do its best to minimize repository downtime: first, new packages files are linked to published root
  
  new metadata files ( Packages , Release , ...) are created in temporary locations
  
  , , ...) are created in temporary locations new versions of metadata files are moved to final locations
  
  old package files are cleaned up from the pool (if required). For example: aptly snapshot create wheezy-7.3 from mirror wheezy-main aptly publish snapshot wheezy-7.3 .... aptly mirror update wheezy-main aptly snapshot create wheezy-7.4 from mirror wheezy-main aptly publish switch wheezy wheezy-7.4
  
  Merge Strategy When merging snapshots aptly would override packages with the version from the latest argument on the command line. This works ok if you merge, for example regular repository and backports. But sometimes this is not enough, e.g. when merging regular repository, updates and security repository. aptly now supports flag -latest to change merge strategy to "latest version wins": aptly snapshot merge -latest wheezy-latest wheezy-backports wheezy-main wheezy-security Thanks to Ryan Uber and Keith Chambers for the idea and pull request.