Elyse Betters Picaro / ZDNET
ZDNET's key takeaways
New Arch tool alerts maintainers when packages are outdated.
Bumpbuddy automates GitLab issue creation for updates.
Web dashboard and API planned for future Bumpbuddy versions.
Bumpbuddy is a new Arch Linux tool that aims to improve how maintainers are informed about packages within the primary repositories. This new app uses a background service (daemon) to monitor package versions and even automatically opens issues on GitLab if it detects a package is out of date.
Why is this important?
For one, it helps maintainers keep abreast of when an upstream package has a new release. This way, developers and maintainers don't have to manually check for this information. Secondly, users will no longer have to bother flagging packages that are out of date and will have access to information that might indicate if an update is taking longer than usual to release. For the most part, however, Bumpbuddy seems to be focused primarily on developers and maintainers.
According to Robin Candau, package maintainer for Arch Linux:
"Bumpbuddy takes advantage of the `.nvchecker.toml` file from GitLab's packages repo to perform automated tracking of new upstream releases. Therefore, package maintainers won't need to rely on manual `pkgctl version check` runs or 'homemade' solutions to track new upstream releases for their packages anymore."
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