Latest stable releases of developer tools, packaged as .deb and served over apt.
Debian freezes package versions for years. We track upstream and publish new releases within hours —
and we've made the Debian packaging itself fast and easy, so any team can do the same.
Debian stable is an excellent base — but its packages freeze at release time
and stay frozen for years. Developer tools move far faster, often releasing
weekly, so the versions shipping in apt are routinely months or years
behind upstream. Every common workaround trades away something real:
| Today's workaround | The catch |
|---|---|
| Wait for Debian stable | Years behind; missing features and fixes |
| Run Sid, or pull from testing/backports | See below — Sid solves a different problem |
curl … | sh install scripts |
No signature verification, no upgrades, no clean uninstall |
| Ad-hoc third-party repos | Often single-arch, unsigned, silently abandoned |
cargo install / pipx / manual builds |
Needs a toolchain; no system-wide updates; you become the packager |
| Snap / Flatpak | Extra runtime and sandboxing overhead for a simple CLI |
"But Debian Sid already has fresh packages — what are you solving?" Sid is a full rolling development branch: every package on your system moves, all the time. It's the right base for working on Debian itself, and the wrong base for a workstation or server you depend on. Installing a single tool from Sid onto stable usually drags in a newer glibc and half the toolchain with it. And even Sid trails upstream — maintainer upload cycles, NEW-queue reviews, and release freezes regularly add weeks of lag.
What we're solving is deliberately narrower: keep Debian stable as your OS, and get just your dev tools at upstream speed — built as proper packages for the stable suites, so nothing else on your system has to move.
latest-debs exists to close that gap. We do proper Debian packaging of
upstream releases in fully public CI and publish to a signed apt repository —
so apt install and apt upgrade just work, across every architecture each
upstream actually ships for Linux, within hours of each upstream release.
Native packages, native tooling, no compromises.
Make Debian packaging fast and easy.
Shipping software for Debian shouldn't require becoming a Debian packager —
yet today it does: debhelper, Policy, control/rules files, multi-arch
builds, signing, repo hosting. A steep, time-consuming detour when you just
want to ship a CLI. Most developers, teams, and orgs skip .deb entirely,
and their Debian users pay for it in curl | sh scripts and stale copies.
latest-debs removes that cost:
- One reusable builder —
debian-multiarch-builder,
a GitHub Action that turns an upstream release into signed, multi-arch
.debpackages in a single workflow run. No packaging expertise required. - Distribution included — releases flow into this signed apt repo automatically. Nothing to host, sign, or babysit.
- Open to your tool — open a
package request,
or add it to
tools.yamlin a PR. Every future upstream release then ships as a.debwithin hours.
Everything in this org is built with that same pipeline — the repo is the demo as well as the product.
On Debian (Bookworm or Trixie), with extrepo:
sudo extrepo enable latest-debs
sudo apt update
sudo apt install uv eza lazygit ruff bun deno duckdb lazydockerOr add the repository manually:
sudo install -d -m 0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/latest-debs/apt-repo/main/latest-debs.asc \
| sudo gpg --dearmor --yes -o /etc/apt/keyrings/latest-debs.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/latest-debs.gpg] https://latest-debs.github.io/apt-repo/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" \
| sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/latest-debs.list
sudo apt updateStatus: early days, but working. All four suites (Bookworm, Trixie, Forky, Sid) are live and signed today. The catalog grows one request at a time — 24 tools and counting.
| Tool | What it is | Latest .deb | Install |
|---|---|---|---|
| uv | Extremely fast Python package & project manager | sudo apt install uv |
|
| eza | Modern, maintained ls replacement |
sudo apt install eza |
|
| lazygit | Simple terminal UI for git | sudo apt install lazygit |
|
| ruff | Extremely fast Python linter & formatter | sudo apt install ruff |
|
| bun | Fast all-in-one JavaScript runtime & toolkit | sudo apt install bun |
|
| deno | Modern runtime for JavaScript & TypeScript | sudo apt install deno |
|
| duckdb | Analytical in-process SQL database | sudo apt install duckdb |
|
| lazydocker | The lazier way to manage everything docker | sudo apt install lazydocker |
|
| ripgrep | Recursively search directories for a regex pattern | sudo apt install ripgrep |
|
| fd | Simple, fast alternative to find |
sudo apt install fd |
|
| fzf | Command-line fuzzy finder | sudo apt install fzf |
|
| starship | Minimal, fast, customizable shell prompt | sudo apt install starship |
|
| just | Handy command runner | sudo apt install just |
|
| hyperfine | Command-line benchmarking tool | sudo apt install hyperfine |
|
| k9s | Kubernetes CLI to manage your clusters in style | sudo apt install k9s |
|
| atuin | Magical shell history | sudo apt install atuin |
|
| xh | Friendly and fast tool for sending HTTP requests | sudo apt install xh |
|
| yq | Portable command-line YAML, JSON & XML processor | sudo apt install yq-go |
|
| dust | A more intuitive version of du |
sudo apt install du-dust |
|
| procs | A modern replacement for ps |
sudo apt install procs |
|
| bottom | Cross-platform graphical process/system monitor | sudo apt install bottom |
|
| bat | A cat(1) clone with wings |
sudo apt install bat |
|
| zoxide | A smarter cd command for your terminal |
sudo apt install zoxide |
|
| delta | Syntax-highlighting pager for git, diff, grep & blame | sudo apt install git-delta |
yq and delta/dust ship under the names yq-go/git-delta/du-dust —
Debian's own archive already has unrelated packages under their plain
names, so ours are disambiguated the same way upstream (or other distros)
already do.
Want another tool packaged? Request it — that's how the list grows. Track all open requests under the
package-request label.
- Debian: Bookworm (12), Trixie (13), Forky (14/testing), and Sid (unstable) — all live
- Architectures: amd64, arm64, armhf, armel, i386 (Bookworm/Trixie only), ppc64el, riscv64, s390x, loong64 — whichever each upstream actually publishes a Linux build for (not every tool covers all nine; see each package's repo for its exact list)
- Updates: the repo rebuilds automatically, roughly every 6 hours after an upstream release
Ubuntu and derivatives are not officially targeted yet — the packages may install fine, but they're only tested on Debian.
All packages are built in public GitHub Actions runs from public upstream sources — no blobs, no private steps. The apt repo is signed with:
ed25519 9329 C48E AEC0 0249 5619 50D4 C34D 4229 518A B96A
uid latest-debs <latest-debs@users.noreply.github.com>
Verify the key you downloaded before enabling the repo:
gpg --show-keys /etc/apt/keyrings/latest-debs.gpgEvery build is produced by debian-multiarch-builder, a reusable GitHub Action you can inspect and reuse.
| Repo | Purpose |
|---|---|
| apt-repo | The aggregate apt repository: signing key, pool/, dists/, build scripts, and the tool registry (tools.yaml) |
<tool>-debian (one per package) |
Per-tool packaging and multi-arch .deb releases — see the Latest .deb column in the Packages table above for each one |
| latest-debs.github.io | The landing page at latest-debs.github.io |
| .github | This profile and org-wide defaults |
| debian-multiarch-builder | The reusable GitHub Action every <tool>-debian repo builds with |
Is this official Debian?
No — unofficial, community packaging. For issues with a tool itself, report
upstream; for packaging issues, open an issue on the tool's -debian repo.
How fresh are the packages? A scheduled workflow checks upstream releases and rebuilds; expect new versions within ~6 hours of the upstream tag.
How do I add my favorite tool?
Open a
package request —
name, upstream URL, and license is all we need. Or add an entry to
tools.yaml
in a PR against apt-repo.
Outreach is the thing we need most right now — the tooling works and the packages exist; what's missing is people bringing them to the projects and developers who'd benefit. If you'd like to sign up for outreach — pitching the packaging service to a project's maintainers, driving package requests, writing about the project, or fielding questions in discussions — see CONTRIBUTING.md.
Packaging fixes, new tools, and build-config reviews are also welcome — see apt-repo for how the pipeline works. If latest-debs saves you time, sponsor the automation.