Update notifier displays notification and an icon in the panel tray area when Debian package updates are available. You can hover the mouse over the icon to check how many updates are available. It's especially suitable for Debian testing/unstable users, because it checks for updates very often. Developed and tested on Xfce desktop environment.
Once upon a time, there was this neat little package in the Debian GNU/Linux repository called update-notifier. It notified when package updates were available. Nowadays, the same named package in the repository is marked transitional, and is depending on quite a large number of other application and library packages. But, I wanted just the icon! So, I used that as an excuse to see how hard it would be to write something like that in Go. Not at all, it seems.
P.S. The original package seems to still be available in Ubuntu Linux here.
To compile:
- Go 1.6+
- libgtk2.0-dev
- libnotify-dev
To run:
- libgtk2.0-0
- libnotify4
- gnome-icon-theme (icons)
- apt-get (to check for updates)
- apt-daily.timer (or similar, to periodically update package lists in the background)
Just use go get.
go get github.com/zcalusic/update-notifier
Here's a simple desktop file you can save as ~/.config/autostart/update-notifier.desktop, so that application is
automatically started when you login. Just adapt TryExec directive to point to the location of the update-notifier
executable on your system.
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Update notifier
Comment=Notify when package updates are available
TryExec=/path/to/update-notifier
Exec=update-notifier
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=
Hidden=falseContributors are welcome, just open a new issue / pull request.
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright © 2016 Zlatko Čalušić
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
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copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
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The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.
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IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
