apk-add - Man Page

apk add [<options>.​.​.​] packages.​.​.​

apk add adds the requested packages to world and installs (or upgrades) them if not already present, ensuring all dependencies are met.​

To upgrade individual packages without modifying world use apk-fix(8).​

By default apk tries to select a set of packages so that all dependencies are satisfied.​ This means that some packages can be held back in an older version if there is direct or implicit dependencies to the older version.​

apk add supports the commit options described in apk(8), as well as the following options:

--initdb

Initialize a new package database.​

-l,  --latest

Always choose the latest package by version.​ However, the versions considered are based on the package pinning.​ Primarily this overrides the default heuristic and will cause an error to displayed if all dependencies cannot be satisfied.​

-u,  --upgrade

Upgrade packages and it's dependencies.​ Normally apk add will avoid changing installed package unless it is required by the newly added packages or their dependencies.​ This changes the default preference to upgrading the package to the latest installable version.​

-t,  --virtual NAME

Create virtual package NAME with given dependencies.​ This new package will get the packages as dependencies instead of world.​ Finally the NAME is added to world.​

One can use this to ensure that selected set of packages are installed, and later the temporary modification be undone with apk-del(8) NAME without removing packages that were installed earlier.​

--no-chown

Do not change file owner or group.​ By default apk will manage the file ownership when running as root.​ However, this option is turned on when running as non-root user, as changing file ownership is not permitted by the system then.​

apk(8).