listing updated packages only

[Gary L. Greene, Jr.]

On Monday 12 June 2006 02:10, Panu Matilainen wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Jun 2006, Vincent Danen wrote:
> > * Gary L. Greene Jr. <greeneg at phoenuxos.com> [2006-06-11 16:10:23 -0400]:
> >>>>> I was looking for an option in apt-cache or apt-get that would allow
> >>>>> me to list packages that apt wanted to update.  For instance, as part
> >>>>> of the daily security routine in Annvix, I update the urpmi medium(s)
> >>>>> and then report, per-media, what packages are available for upgrade
> >>>>> in a cronjob so the admin gets an email saying they're behind on
> >>>>> such-and-such packages.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I can't seem to find something like this for apt, however.  The
> >>>>> closest thing I see is "apt-get upgrade -s" but it's a little messy. 
> >>>>> I could clean it up myself by parsing it for the email, but was
> >>>>> wondering if there was another option available.
> >>>>
> >>>> The "simulate" mode (-s) is indeed noisy and occasionally gives nasty
> >>>> looking false alerts about conflicts in packages etc. Maybe someday
> >>>> somebody will get around to fix it...
> >>>
> >>> Noisy is ok... false alerts isn't so nice.
> >>>
> >>>> There's --check-only which .. hmm, doesn't seem to be documented
> >>>> anywhere, sigh. Anyway that's probably the closest thing to what you
> >>>> want, at the moment at least.
> >>>
> >>> =)  Well, --check-only looks like it'll do the job nicely with a little
> >>> formatting.
> >>>
> >>> The lua idea is a nice one... might look into that.  Never done
> >>> anything with lua before so it might be interesting to try.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks.
> >>
> >> Vincent, if you do that, can you please send me the script? I could use
> >> that for PhoeNUX's apt-rpm so I can get rid of a LOT of excess code in
> >> Pi (package installer) which is an add / remove programs GUI app I'm
> >> writing in perl-qt.
> >
> > The lua script or the shellscript?  The shellscript is being done first
> > as that's the one I know I can whip out quickly.  The lua script...
> > probably not so quick, although I'll know more once I start looking at
> > the other scripts.
>
> What sort of things are we talking about here, exactly? I think a cronjob
> for automatical updates (or "updates available" notifications) are a
> pretty common need.
>
> There's already a crude cronjob for this in contrib/apt-cron but that
> could be enhanced in plenty of ways, including a nicer output for the
> purpose by using a custom lua script etc.
>
> Folks interested in this, could you list your needs in a bit more detailed
> level than "updater / update-checker running from cron" :) Mock output is
> fine, and doesn't matter if it's a bit distro-specific, we can then figure
> out the common needs and find ways to make those distro-specific things
> possible. I should be able to whip out something for this pretty
> quickly... that can be then improved on and included in contrib/ etc.
>
>  	- Panu -
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Going through past conversations on the list....

I think with regard to a update-checker run via cron, stand-alone GUI tools, 
or some tray applet in KDE/GNOME, a plain output of package names would work 
in the beginning. What I'd LOVE to see is the RPM change-log or some such be 
packed into the apt cached DB. Then we could have the lua script do the list 
with the following format:

[PACKAGE_NAME]\t[STRING_CONTAINING_MOST_RECENT_CHANGE_LOG_ENTRY]\n

Then it can be parsed by external tools, like the script that Vincent was 
working with or the package install tools I and Logan are working on.

-- 
Gary L. Greene, Jr.
Sent from: uriel.tolharadys.net
 11:14:58 up 15:01,  4 users,  load average: 0.56, 0.21, 0.08
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