Don't want to use YaST ? Use Zypper.

Migrating from Ubuntu to OpenSuSe and want to use apt like tool ? Use Zypper.

Zypper is a very easy to use, feature rich, high performance, command line (CLI) interface for OpenSuSe Linux package manager. The features can be classified under the following categories.

• Package Management
• Repository Management
• Queries
• Update Management
• Package Locks
• Output formats and Utilities

Let us look at some of the most commonly used features, namely - installing packages, updating packages and adding new repositories. let us say, you want to install 'koffice' which is an office suite.

zypper install koffice

At some later point in time, you would like to update the 'koffice' package.

zypper update -t koffice

You want to remove the package.

zypper remove koffice

You would like to know more about the 'install' command passed to zypper.

zypper help install

You would like to update your OpenSuSe Linux system.

zypper update

If there are decisions that need your attention, then zypper is going to ask you questions. Should you want zypper to take the decisions, the command looks like.

zypper --non-interactive update 

A 'Repository' is a local or remote directory containing packages and package metadata. The key commands or verbs are - refresh, repos, addrepo, removerepo, namerepo, modifyrepo. To list the repositories configured on your system with names, uri, properties and priorities.

zypper lr -u -d -p

Typically, OpenSuSe repositories are categorized as repo-oss, repo-non-oss and repo-debug. While it is common to access repositories over the network, you can even point to DVD or CD or even ISO image as a repository. Please see the URI syntax and examples at http://en.opensuse.org/Libzypp/URI To update the cache of the 'main' repository.

zypper refresh main

Complete usage options are listed here

http://en.opensuse.org/Zypper/Usage

For those of us, who are keen to look at Zypper from a development perspective. Zypp is the infrastracture that provides a powerful dependency resolver, package management API. Both Zypper and YaST use this infrastructure.

Libzypp http://en.opensuse.org/Libzypp

Design http://en.opensuse.org/Libzypp/Design

So, Zypp around and be productive.