[pacman-dev] Mark outdated packages automatically (aka Livecheck)

[Anatol Pomozov]

Hi

On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 11:33 AM, Jelle van der Waa <jelle at vdwaa.nl> wrote:
> On 24/03/13 19:23, Lukas Fleischer wrote:
>> On Sun, Mar 24, 2013 at 11:12:05AM -0700, Anatol Pomozov wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I believe in automatization. Any routine work that can be done
>>> automatically should be done this way.
>>>
>>> One such thing that can be improved in Arch project is discovering
>>> out-of-date packages. Currently it is done by users who go to
>>> https://www.archlinux.org/packages/ find the package and then click
>>> "Flag Package Out-of-Date" link. Why to bother users? Why not to let
>>> some bot to visit websites and check for new versions?
>>>
>>> There are examples of package managers that have such functionality -
>>> macports http://guide.macports.org/chunked/reference.livecheck.html
>>> Their Portfiles can have information about how to find released files
>>> (using regexp). Then periodically (e.g. daily) a bot visits webpages,
>>> parses html and checks if new files are present.
>>>
>>> Is it possible to have such functionality in pacman? It would save
>>> users time and make package update time lower.
>>
>> Some developers and Trusted Users already use tools to check websites
>> for updates. I agree that it might be better to do this in a central
>> location but this is certainly not a pacman issue. Maybe we could add
>> something to archweb (or just use a bot, as you already mentioned).
>>
> IIRC most Dev/TU's use urlwatcher. Adding it to archweb would indeed
> awesome.
>
> The archweb code is available at [1].
>
> [1] https://projects.archlinux.org/archweb.git/

I filed a task so it will be easier to track its status
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/34447