Is this the best way to update installed software?

[mal1k-me]

I couldn't find another way 🤷‍♂️

dietpi-software reinstall \
    (dietpi-software list --machine-readable | grep ".*|2" | cut -d'|' -f1)

This is a command line for fish shell

[MichaIng]

This reinstall all installed software, including possible config resets in some cases. Is it really what you want? Also some software titles are not updated via reinstall, if they have an embedded updater.

Much software is kept up-to-date with apt upgrade, many have an internal updater, which should then be used, preferably, some have dedicated update scripts or can be updated via other package managers: pip, npm, ... I personally would check the "right" method in our docs for each software title, and either do this manually when you know there is a new version available (often the respective UI informs you, or there are newsletters or Git repos to follow), and run these on demand. Or create a script which contains the steps for all software titles which need it, if you need an all-in-one step.

In any case, you might want to harden it a bit, in case some of the patterns appear in software description or other parts of the output line:

dietpi-software list --machine-readable | mawk -F'|' '$2==2 {print $1}'

So if field 2 (guaranteed to be the install state) equals 2, print field 1.

I see there is a need for a dietpi-software update ... command 😄.

[mal1k-me]

I see. Here's what happened: I updated Gitea (which is not available in Debian repos) by running dietpi-software reinstall 165. But then I thought how about other programs like Gitea (i.e. not upgradble via apt)? So I came up with that command.

Therefore it is indeed helpful to have an update subcommand (that is a global one for such programs).