Reinstalling favourites while Distro Hopping

[b1ackcr0w]

I quite frequently hop between a bunch of Debian based variants. For example, I'm on Mint 15 today, but I'm pretty sure I'll want to give 13.10 a go on or soon after realease, but soon after I'll be tempted by Mint 16, then I might have a go with #! and so on. I'm pretty happy to stay with 64bit.

However, I also like to use a fair bit of software that's not in the standard build, and needs re-installing. And I also use a fair amount of software not in the repos (for instance Chrome Browser, Spideroak, Multisystem, Steam. This can rather suck the joy out of distro hopping.

I am considering writing a shell script to do this, or maybe even a little python project. Before I do, I wonder if i'm reinventing the wheel and there's already a tool for this very purpose.

Has anybody got any suggestions?

[newb85]

Such a shell script should be trivial, provided you're sticking with systems that use sudo and apt package management.

[buzzingrobot]

Stash deb's and other installation packages on Ubuntu One or Dropbox or someplace similar. When you install a new dsitribution, grab those files and install them Whether or not you need a shell script to do that depends, I suspect.

I use Dropbox for that purpose: Fonts, background images, deb's I've built, exported bookmarks, etc. I install and run Dropbox right after an install completes. I go make some coffee while it synchs the files. When I come back, I install the deb's, install the fonts, etc., and I'm done.