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How to get an email notification every time a package is updated upstream?

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  How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? B <b@mydomainnameisbiggerthanyours.com> - 2024-06-30 04:30 +0200
    Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-06-30 04:50 +0200
      Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? Will Mengarini <seldon@eskimo.com> - 2024-06-30 05:20 +0200
        Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-06-30 05:30 +0200
          Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? John Crawley <john@bunsenlabs.org> - 2024-06-30 06:40 +0200
            Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? B <b@mydomainnameisbiggerthanyours.com> - 2024-06-30 07:50 +0200
              Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? Keith Bainbridge <keithrbau@gmail.com> - 2024-06-30 08:10 +0200
      Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? B <b@mydomainnameisbiggerthanyours.com> - 2024-06-30 07:50 +0200
        Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is  updated upstream? debian-user@howorth.org.uk - 2024-06-30 12:40 +0200
        Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-06-30 15:10 +0200
    Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? Michael Kjörling <c9bc136c6063@ewoof.net> - 2024-06-30 11:00 +0200
      Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated  upstream? B <b@mydomainnameisbiggerthanyours.com> - 2024-06-30 11:40 +0200
        Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2024-06-30 20:30 +0200
          Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2024-06-30 20:50 +0200
            Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated B <b@mydomainnameisbiggerthanyours.com> - 2024-07-01 05:40 +0200
              Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2024-07-01 06:40 +0200

#270624 — How to get an email notification every time a package is updated upstream?

My objective is to get an email notification when an update is available 
for a specific Debian package.

It sounds simple. Something like this should already exist, right? The 
requirements are trivial. Yet after doing a lot of research I can't find 
an existing solution that doesn't have problems.

Does anyone have any suggestions or input?

Below is all extra info and research I did.



Let's identify my requirements:

The notification method I want is email, but I would consider other 
things since I could probably easily convert it to a mail with a script.

The packages I want to monitor are arbitrary and specific. The 
distribution and architecture must also be taken into account. For a 
given package, if I want to know about changes in unstable, then it must 
not generate notifications against stable, experimental, source, or some 
other architecture.



Research and existing solutions:

When researching, I found the following tools which are related or might 
be useful, but unfortunately I disqualified everything because it didn't 
meet my requirements.

Obviously we want to get as close to the authoritative source of truth 
as possible. This means it would be preferred to get the notification 
sent by Debian infrastructure. So the first thing I looked at was 
tracker and the Debian mailing lists. Unfortunately, they don't do what 
I want. The problem is that these are dev-oriented, not user-oriented. 
Notifications/NEWS occurs when source/uploads get accepted, not when 
built packages are released to the FTP servers.

The new Tracker system: https://tracker.debian.org

The old tracker, which is no longer working, but it's noteworthy: 
https://packages.qa.debian.org/ 
(https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2002/01/msg00011.html)

The Debian mailing lists:
     https://lists.debian.org/debian-changes/
     https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-changes/
     https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/

Packages/tools:

     unattended-upgrades
         might have some tools
  https://serverfault.com/questions/970136/how-do-i-make-unattended-upgrades-email-me-every-time-it-runs

     apticron
         https://packages.debian.org/sid/apticron
  https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/apt-get-apticron-send-email-upgrades-available/
         Lots of downsides
             The package must be installed on a local system
                 Only notifies on packages installed on the system where 
apticron is installed
             It requires the local package list to be updated regularly
                 unless you run some custom cache dir or container

     cron-apt
         Related, but does not do notifications
  https://www.debuntu.org/how-to-email-notification-upon-available-package-updates-with-cron-apt/

     package-update-indicator
         This is a GUI package

Other stuff:

https://serverfault.com/questions/226340/debian-automatic-notification-of-updates
     apt-get -qq update && apt-get -dqq dist-upgrade && apt-get -qq 
--simulate dist-upgrade | grep ^Inst

https://superuser.com/questions/1062534/debian-how-to-get-notified-when-packages-for-dist-upgrade-are-available
     Similar, but only shows notifications for dist-upgrade packages

https://serverfault.com/questions/300749/apt-get-update-upgrade-list-without-changing-anything
     apt list --upgradable
     apt-get --simulate upgrade



At this point, I think I'm going to have to scrape 
https://packages.debian.org or use the API: 
https://sources.debian.org/doc/api/

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#270625

On Sat, Jun 29, 2024 at 19:15:55 -0700, B wrote:
> My objective is to get an email notification when an update is available for
> a specific Debian package.

I already have questions.

Your Subject header includes the word "upstream".  This word appears
*nowhere* else in the entire email, and it completely moves the goalposts.

Are you looking for notifications that a new Debian *package* has become
available, or are you looking for notifications that the *upstream*
developer has released a new version, which may or may not have a
corresponding set of Debian packages?

My next question: is this a package that's *installed* on your system?

If you only care about new Debian packages, and if the package is one
that's installed on your system, then you should be able to slap
something together using "apt-get update" (or unattended-upgrades) and
"apt-cache policy pkgname".

Oh hey, good timing -- a new point release was apparently just dropped.
After an "apt-get update", I have:

hobbit:~$ apt-cache policy bash
bash:
  Installed: 5.2.15-2+b2
  Candidate: 5.2.15-2+b7
  Version table:
     5.2.15-2+b7 500
        500 http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm/main amd64 Packages
 *** 5.2.15-2+b2 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Note that the "Installed:" and "Candidate:" lines differ.  We can write
a simple shell script to compare them.


hobbit:~$ cat pkgcheck
#!/bin/bash

if (($# != 1)); then
    echo "usage: pkgcheck PKGNAME" >&2
    exit 2
fi

installed= candidate=
while read -r line; do
    case $line in
        Installed:*) installed=${line##* } ;;
        Candidate:*) candidate=${line##* } ;;
    esac
done < <(apt-cache policy "$1")

if [[ "$installed" != "$candidate" ]]; then
    printf '%s\n  Installed: %s\n  Candidate: %s\n' \
        "$1" "$installed" "$candidate"
    exit 1
fi

exit 0


hobbit:~$ ./pkgcheck bash
bash
  Installed: 5.2.15-2+b2
  Candidate: 5.2.15-2+b7
hobbit:~$ ./pkgcheck libc6
hobbit:~$ 

Will this do?  It isn't clever about handling packages that have multiple
candidates, so you might want to think about how to deal with those, if
you have that kind of situation.  You can also add some bells and whistles,
like a -q option or whatever you want.

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#270627

* Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> [24-06/29=Sa 22:48 -0400]:
> Your Subject header includes the word "upstream".  This word appears
> *nowhere* else in the entire email, and it completely moves the goalposts.

"Upstream" was a misleading misnomer intended to refer to anything
... well, "upstream" of the OP's system.  The OP didn't realize
that 'upstream' has essentially become a term of art in package
management, referring to whence code comes before it's packaged.

* B <b@mydomainnameisbiggerthanyours.com> [24-06/29=Sa 19:15 -0700]:
>> [...] requirements [...] For a given package, if I want to know
>> about changes in unstable, then it must not generate notifications
>> against stable, experimental, source, or some other architecture.
>>
>> [...] Tracker and the Debian mailing lists [...] are dev-oriented,
>> not user-oriented.  Notifications/NEWS occurs when source/uploads get
>> accepted, not when built packages are released to the FTP servers.

So the OP wants to know about Debian package updates.

> If you only care about new Debian packages, and if the
> package is one that's installed on your system [...]

All we still need to know is whether the OP cares
about packages that aren't installed, or whether some
other aspect of Greg's solution isn't sufficient.

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#270628

On Sat, Jun 29, 2024 at 20:12:36 -0700, Will Mengarini wrote:
> All we still need to know is whether the OP cares
> about packages that aren't installed, or whether some
> other aspect of Greg's solution isn't sufficient.

If there's interest in new versions of uninstalled packages, then we
have an additional bit of complexity -- how do you know whether the
candidate package is "new"?  You would need an "old" version number
to compare against.

Possible answers include "the candidate version number that I got the
last time I ran the script" or "a version number that I'll provide as
a second argument to the script".  We'd need to know what the OP has
in mind here.

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#270629

On 30/06/2024 12:19, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 29, 2024 at 20:12:36 -0700, Will Mengarini wrote:
>> All we still need to know is whether the OP cares
>> about packages that aren't installed, or whether some
>> other aspect of Greg's solution isn't sufficient.
> 
> If there's interest in new versions of uninstalled packages, then we
> have an additional bit of complexity -- how do you know whether the
> candidate package is "new"?  You would need an "old" version number
> to compare against.
> 
> Possible answers include "the candidate version number that I got the
> last time I ran the script" or "a version number that I'll provide as
> a second argument to the script".  We'd need to know what the OP has
> in mind here.
> 

rmadison will fetch data about package versions available in the Debian repositories.
Its output might be usefully parsed by a script.

-- 
John

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#270634

On 6/29/24 9:30 PM, John Crawley wrote:
>
> rmadison will fetch data about package versions available in the 
> Debian repositories.
> Its output might be usefully parsed by a script. 

Thank you! I totally forgot about madison.

https://qa.debian.org/madison.php

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#270636

On 30/6/24 15:45, B wrote:
> 
> 
> On 6/29/24 9:30 PM, John Crawley wrote:
>>
>> rmadison will fetch data about package versions available in the 
>> Debian repositories.
>> Its output might be usefully parsed by a script. 
> 
> Thank you! I totally forgot about madison.
> 
> https://qa.debian.org/madison.php
> 

What would happen if you ran:

sudo apt update && sudo apt list --upgradable

every hour or so via cron?   Cron can email the output I believe
-- 
All the best

Keith Bainbridge

keithrbau@gmail.com
keith.bainbridge.3216@gmail.com
+61 (0)447 667 468

UTC + 10:00

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#270633

On 6/29/24 7:48 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> Your Subject header includes the word "upstream". This word appears
> *nowhere* else in the entire email, and it completely moves the goalposts.
>
> Are you looking for notifications that a new Debian*package* has become
> available, or are you looking for notifications that the*upstream*
> developer has released a new version, which may or may not have a
> corresponding set of Debian packages?

Good question but Will's interpretation is correct. This is the Debian 
*User* mailing list after all.

My bad. I was aware of the meaning of "upstream" in regards to package 
maintainership but wasn't thinking someone would fixate on that when I 
used that in the subject. Just throw that word away.

> My next question: is this a package that's*installed* on your system?

No. Not even the same arch or release as the installed system. I'll even 
go further and tell you I want these notifications on a Windows system 
or an iPhone. And the Debian systems are air-gapped with no Internet access.

It seems crazy that in all the history of Debian, nobody said "There's a 
package I care about and I want to get immediately when a new version is 
released." And if they had, doing an "apt-get update" every minute of 
the day would not have been any part of the desired outcome.

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#270645 — Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated upstream?

B <b@mydomainnameisbiggerthanyours.com> wrote:
> It seems crazy that in all the history of Debian, nobody said
> "There's a package I care about and I want to get immediately when a
> new version is released." And if they had, doing an "apt-get update"
> every minute of the day would not have been any part of the desired
> outcome.

I'd expect that normally when somebody is so keen about a particular
package, they'd be more interested to know when a new upstream version
of the package appeared, rather than it appearing in a debian update.
So the answer would depend on a lot of factors and wouldn't have a
general answer.

But in general, if there isn't an event-driven mechanism available(*)
then a polling solution is generally the next step.

* e.g. accepting notifications of all updates and filtering for the
  interesting one.

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#270648

On Sat, Jun 29, 2024 at 22:46:00 -0700, B wrote:
> On 6/29/24 7:48 PM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > My next question: is this a package that's*installed* on your system?
> 
> No. Not even the same arch or release as the installed system. I'll even go
> further and tell you I want these notifications on a Windows system or an
> iPhone. And the Debian systems are air-gapped with no Internet access.

https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/064

 21. If^H^HWhen the newbie's question is ambiguous, the proper
     interpretation will be whichever one makes the problem the hardest
     to solve.

Good to know the universe hasn't changed.

Now, levity aside, let's say you write a PowerShell script and run it
on your Microsoft Windows computer, and it queries the Debian repositories,
and it learns that bash version 5.2.15-2+b7 is the currently available
version for bookworm.

Is this version new?  Is it old?  Do you want to be informed of it?

How does your program determine whether to notify you or not?

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#270641

On 29 Jun 2024 19:15 -0700, from b@mydomainnameisbiggerthanyours.com (B):
> My objective is to get an email notification when an update is available for
> a specific Debian package.
> 
> It sounds simple. Something like this should already exist, right? The
> requirements are trivial. Yet after doing a lot of research I can't find an
> existing solution that doesn't have problems.
> 
> Does anyone have any suggestions or input?

I will readily admit that it doesn't immediately meet all of your
criteria, but one possible venue especially if you are only interested
in a few specific packages might be to point e.g. rss2email at the
package events RSS feed available through tracker.debian.org. At that
point you can use typical email filtering to further filter it down to
only those events you are interested in (for example, only those that
mention "into stable").

-- 
Michael Kjörling                     🔗 https://michael.kjorling.se
“Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”

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#270642

On 6/30/24 1:55 AM, Michael Kjörling wrote:
> I will readily admit that it doesn't immediately meet all of your
> criteria, but one possible venue especially if you are only interested
> in a few specific packages might be to point e.g. rss2email at the
> package events RSS feed available through tracker.debian.org. At that
> point you can use typical email filtering to further filter it down to
> only those events you are interested in (for example, only those that
> mention "into stable").

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately I already researched that 
and there are problems.

The RSS news feed  would not be needed in this case. Tracker can already 
send emails directly to you.

There is the debian-changes@lists.debian.org and 
debian-devel-changes@lists.debian.org mailing lists, if you want to get 
notified for everything.

Otherwise, you can select specific packages and keyword/event types 
through the web interface. Register, login, and then add your subscriptions:

https://tracker.debian.org/accounts/subscriptions/

Like I think I said in my original email, Tracker is 
dev/source-oriented, not user/package-oriented. Notifications are sent 
out when new source or other uploads are accepted into the archive. This 
is not the same thing as a new package version becoming available for 
download in the repos. Many packages have completely different source 
and package names (The linux kernel for example), and of course 
architecture is usually not considered at all, unless it's a binary upload.

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#270669 — Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated

On Sun 30 Jun 2024 at 02:31:28 (-0700), B wrote:
> Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately I already researched that
> and there are problems.

On Sat 29 Jun 2024 at 22:46:00 (-0700), B wrote:
> It seems crazy that in all the history of Debian, nobody said "There's
> a package I care about and I want to get immediately when a new
> version is released."

On Sat 29 Jun 2024 at 19:15:55 (-0700), B wrote:
> The packages I want to monitor are arbitrary and specific. The
> distribution and architecture must also be taken into account. For a
> given package, if I want to know about changes in unstable, then it
> must not generate notifications against stable, experimental, source,
> or some other architecture.

Can I ask why?

Cheers,
David.

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#270671 — Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated

On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 13:22:15 -0500, David Wright wrote:
> On Sat 29 Jun 2024 at 22:46:00 (-0700), B wrote:
> > It seems crazy that in all the history of Debian, nobody said "There's
> > a package I care about and I want to get immediately when a new
> > version is released."

No, the crazy part is when you add "... on my airgapped Debian system"
to the requirements.

Most people who care about getting upgrades immediately are concerned
because these are *security* updates, and their Debian systems are
accessible over a network (perhaps the Internet); thus, keeping up to
date on security patches is a high priority.

On such systems, one may use unattended-upgrades to download the
packages automatically, and possibly even install them automatically,
depending on one's configuration choices.

If your Debian system is airgapped, the security concerns are greatly
reduced.  Getting patches onto it becomes far less of a race against
time.

If you also want an email when security patches are released,
there is already a solution to that as well: subscribe to the
debian-security-announce mailing list.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/

> On Sat 29 Jun 2024 at 19:15:55 (-0700), B wrote:
> > The packages I want to monitor are arbitrary and specific. The
> > distribution and architecture must also be taken into account. For a
> > given package, if I want to know about changes in unstable, then it
> > must not generate notifications against stable, experimental, source,
> > or some other architecture.
> 
> Can I ask why?

You can.  I have a funny feeling we won't get an answer.

The fact that B is interested in unstable *primarily* (it's the first
thing mentioned) tells us an enormous amount.

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#270685 — Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Darn and I liked your wiki. I didn't know you were a toxic.


On 6/30/24 11:43 AM, Greg Wooledge wrote:
>> Can I ask why?
> You can.  I have a funny feeling we won't get an answer.
>
> The fact that B is interested in unstable*primarily*  (it's the first
> thing mentioned) tells us an enormous amount.

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#270686 — Re: How to get an email notification every time a package is updated

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Sun, Jun 30, 2024 at 08:34:25PM -0700, B wrote:
> 
> Darn and I liked your wiki. I didn't know you were a toxic.

Please stop that.

He was one trying to offer help. Part of that help was pointing
out that your requirements, as you stated them, are incomplete
and possibly contradictory.

Many of us (me included, I admit) just thought "uh, oh, let's
wait until things become a bit clearer", which is, I admit
again, a bit cowardly.

Maybe Greg was a bit harsh. He is, sometimes. But not toxic,
far from it.

Cheers
-- 
t

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