[pacman-dev] [IDEA | WHISH] Give pacman the ability to fetch latest news from website before critical updates/upgrades

[Martin Cigorraga]

Hi guys!

I was thinking it could be a cool feature if pacman can warn the user every
time news are published on our main page by issuing an alert when:
1. issuing a pacman -Syu  -- which involves full system upgrade
2. issuing a pacman -S {package}  --  providing the package being installed
or upgraded is named in the latest news.

Furthermore, the alert type could be customized within pacman.conf to show
a simple alert message, to actually show the full news or to not show
anything at all:
1. Simple message example: "There are some important news you should be
aware, please consider visiting: http://www.archlinux.org/\n\n", or "[...]
please consider visiting Arch Linux front page.", etc. I myself prefer the
first option since most X consoles/terminals can convert the url to a
clickable link.
2. Full news shown: "Latest news from 2012-07-14: The /lib directory
becomes a symlink\nAll Arch Linux packages have had their files in[...]"

A flag in -for example- /var/lib/pacman/sync can be set once the warning or
full news are displayed to avoid showing them again if there isn't fresh
news to show.

I want to make it clear I _do_ check out our front page regularly, I do
navigate the forums and I do read our mailing lists for both request help
myself and -to try- to help fellow archers as much as my meager free time
let me do that, but I still think this would be a great addition to pacman
than can make its use a smoother and streamlined experience.

Please let me know ff this list isn't the right place to post this feature
request so I can post it again in the right place.
Best wishes,
Martín Cigorraga

-- 
-msx