pkgupd

Description

Pkugpd is a daemon that monitors archlinux repositories and AUR for updates. The server understands simple JSON messages and clients can be written in any language. A simple CLI client written in python is included, which also serves as the reference client implementation.

HowTo

Compile and install

You will need a Go toolchain to build. In your $GOPATH/src clone the repository (it’s not go-gettable yet, sorry) and also go get the dependencies

go get github.com/jessevdk/go-flags
go get github.com/go-fsnotify/fsnotify

Then you can go install pkugpd/pkgupd. It is recommended that you use the PKGBUILD for the installation though, as it will build a ready-to-use archlinux package.

Use and configure

A systemd service is bundled with the package with reasonable defaults. You can tweak them by editing /etc/conf.d/pkgupd and adding your options in $PKGUPD_ARGS. Check the manpage for all available options.

Communicating with the server

Clients can poll the server for updates either through a TCP socket or through a UNIX socket, depending on how the program has been invoked. The protocol is very simple, but it may change in the future. To ask for an update the client sends a JSON string as such. JSON strings must be followed by a new line character \n. Everything after the new line character is discarded.

{ "RequestType": "[ServiceType]" }\n

[ServiceType] can be currently either repo or aur for, although more can be added in the future. repo prints all updatable packages that are backed by a repository and aur all updatable packages that are found in AUR. Packages missing from either services are never reported.

The format of the server’s response is

{ "ResponseType": "[Type]", "Data": "..." }\n

[Type] can either be ok or error. In case of an error Data contains the error message. If no error occurred Data will be a list of packages. The format of a package is:

{
  "Name" : "...",
  "LocalVersion" : "...",
  "RemoteVersion" : "...",
  "Foreign" : "[true|false]"
}

New lines are added for clarity. There are no new lines in the response except for the final one, so you can safely delimit the responses at new lines. Name is the name of the package, LocalVersion is the currently installed version of the package, RemoteVersion is the updatable version either on the repository or in AUR and Foreign indicates whether the package is backed by a repository (false) or not (true).