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/
