Re: [gentoo-user] Systray app notifying of updated packages?

[Stroller]

On 3 June 2013, at 23:30, Walter Dnes wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 04, 2013 at 12:02:27AM +0200, Sebastian Pipping wrote
>
>> Does anyone know an app sitting in the systray sending/popping
>> notifications when installed packages can be updated?
>
>  I'm not aware of any.  That could be done under Gentoo, via scripting,
> if someone is willing to put in the work.  You would need a background
> process running "emerge --sync" *AS ROOT* on a daily basis, possibly a
> cron job.  Then it would have to be followed by
>
> emerge -pv --deep --update --changed-use @world > updates.txt

I think systray notifications are a bad idea, but I don't know that a daily cron job is the answer.

Gentoo.org requests that one does not sync every 5 minutes. I think current policy might allow 4 times per day, but the only statement I can find on the website is from 2003, "Sync 1-2 times per day, maximum. … Analysis of rsync logs show that a few discourteous users syncing 10, 15 or even 25 times per day are using a disproportionate amount of rsync mirror resources."

IMO systray notifications are to tell the user about stuff that's happening *right now* - incoming email or instant messages, tweets, buddies coming online, new comments on your blog or new uploads from your favourite YouTube channel. 

I think Portage might usefully use systray notifications to tell you that a package has finished installing (so please read the update notes and restart the web / mail server) or that package 11 of 20 has compiled, but I don't think systray notifications should be used for something that happens infrequently, say only once or twice a day.

I don't really see the benefit of systray notifications (over a daily email), but if OP really wants that, I think it would be better to write a script that checks the RSS feed of http://packages.gentoo.org (which I think puts less strain on Gentoo infrastructure) and then parses the updates to see if the package is actually installed on the system, before notifying the user. This is probably a bit more work.

Stroller.