nvchecker 1.2.7

New version checker for software

nvchecker (short for new version checker) is for checking if a new version of some software has been released.

Contents

• Dependency
• Install and Run
  • JSON logging
• Version Record Files
  • The nvtake Command
• Version Source Files
  • Configuration Section
  • Global Optons
  • Search in a Webpage
  • Find with a Command
  • Check AUR
  • Check GitHub
  • Check BitBucket
  • Check GitLab
  • Check PyPI
  • Check RubyGems
  • Check NPM Registry
  • Check Hackage
  • Check CPAN
  • Check Packagist
  • Check Local Pacman Database
  • Check Arch Linux official packages
  • Check Debian Linux official packages
  • Check Ubuntu Linux official packages
  • Check Anitya (release-monitoring.org)
  • Check Android SDK
  • Manually updating
  • Version Control System (VCS) (git, hg, svn, bzr)
  • Other
• Bugs
• Footnotes

Dependency

• Python 3.5+
• Python library: structlog
• One of these Python library combinations (ordered by preference):
  • tornado + pycurl
  • aiohttp
  • tornado
• All commands used in your version source files

Install and Run

To install:

pip3 install nvchecker

To use the latest code, you can also clone this repository and run:

python3 setup.py install

To see available options:

nvchecker --help

Run with one or more software version source files:

nvchecker source_file

You normally will like to specify some “version record files”; see below.

JSON logging

With --logger=json or --logger=both, you can get a structured logging for programmatically consuming. You can use --json-log-fd=N to specify the file descriptor to send logs to (take care to do line buffering). The logging level option (-l or --logging) doesn’t take effect with this.

The JSON log is one JSON string per line. The following documented events and fields are stable, undocumented ones may change without notice.

event=updated

An update is detected. Fields name, old_version and version are available. old_version maybe null.

event=up-to-date

There is no update. Fields name and version are available.

event=no-result

No version is detected. There may be an error. Fields name is available.

level=error

There is an error. Fields name and exc_info may be available to give further information.

Version Record Files

Version record files record which version of the software you know or is available. They are simple key-value pairs of (name, version) separated by a space:

fcitx 4.2.7
google-chrome 27.0.1453.93-200836
vim 7.3.1024

Say you’ve got a version record file called old_ver.txt which records all your watched software and their versions, as well as some configuration entries. To update it using nvchecker:

nvchecker source.ini

See what are updated with nvcmp:

nvcmp source.ini

Manually compare the two files for updates (assuming they are sorted alphabetically; files generated by nvchecker are already sorted):

comm -13 old_ver.txt new_ver.txt
# or say that in English:
comm -13 old_ver.txt new_ver.txt | awk '{print $1 " has updated to version " $2 "."}'
# show both old and new versions
join old_ver.txt new_ver.txt | awk '$2 != $3'

The nvtake Command

This command helps to manage version record files. It reads both old and new version record files, and a list of names given on the commandline. It then update the versions of those names in the old version record file.

This helps when you have known (and processed) some of the updated software, but not all. You can tell nvchecker that via this command instead of editing the file by hand.

This command will help most if you specify where you version record files are in your config file. See below for how to use a config file.

Version Source Files

The software version source files are in ini format. Section names is the name of the software. Following fields are used to tell nvchecker how to determine the current version of that software.

See sample_source.ini for an example.

Configuration Section

A special section named __config__ is special, it provides some configuration options.

Relative path are relative to the source files, and ~ and environmental variables are expanded.

Currently supported options are:

oldver

Specify a version record file containing the old version info.

newver

Specify a version record file to store the new version info.

proxy

The HTTP proxy to use. The format is host:port, e.g. localhost:8087.

max_concurrent

Max number of concurrent jobs. Default: 20.

keyfile

Specify an ini config file containing key (token) information. This file should contain a keys section, mapping key names to key values. See specific source for the key name(s) to use.

Global Options

The following options apply to all checkers.

prefix

Strip the prefix string if the version string starts with it. Otherwise the version string is returned as-is.

from_pattern, to_pattern

Both are Python-compatible regular expressions. If from_pattern is found in the version string, it will be replaced with to_pattern.

missing_ok

Suppress warnings and errors if a version checking module finds nothing. Currently only regex supports it.

If both prefix and from_pattern/to_pattern are used, from_pattern/to_pattern are ignored. If you want to strip the prefix and then do something special, just use from_pattern`/to_pattern. For example, the transformation of v1_1_0 => 1.1.0 can be achieved with from_pattern = v(\d+)_(\d+)_(\d+) and to_pattern = \1.\2.\3.

Search in a Webpage

Search through a specific webpage for the version string. This type of version finding has these fields:

url

The URL of the webpage to fetch.

encoding

(Optional) The character encoding of the webpage, if latin1 is not appropriate.

regex

A regular expression used to find the version string.

It can have zero or one capture group. The capture group or the whole match is the version string.

When multiple version strings are found, the maximum of those is chosen.

proxy

The HTTP proxy to use. The format is host:port, e.g. localhost:8087.

user_agent

The User-Agent header value to use. Use something more like a tool (e.g. curl/7.40.0) in Europe or the real web page won’t get through because cookie policies (SourceForge has this issue).

sort_version_key

Sort the version string using this key function. Choose between parse_version and vercmp. Default value is parse_version. parse_version use pkg_resources.parse_version. vercmp use pyalpm.vercmp.

Find with a Command

Use a shell command line to get the version. The output is striped first, so trailing newlines do not bother.

cmd

The command line to use. This will run with the system’s standard shell (i.e. /bin/sh).

Check AUR

Check Arch User Repository for updates.

aur

The package name in AUR. If empty, use the name of software (the section name).

strip-release

Strip the release part.

use_last_modified

Append last modified time to the version.

Check GitHub

Check GitHub for updates. The version returned is in date format %Y%m%d, e.g. 20130701.

github

The github repository, with author, e.g. lilydjwg/nvchecker.

branch

Which branch to track? Default: master.

use_latest_release

Set this to true to check for the latest release on GitHub. An annotated tag creates a “release” on GitHub. It’s not the same with git tags, which includes both annotated tags and lightweight ones.

use_max_tag

Set this to true to check for the max tag on GitHub. Unlike use_latest_release, this option includes both annotated tags and lightweight ones, and return the biggest one sorted by pkg_resources.parse_version.

include_tags_pattern

Only include tags matching this pattern. This option must be used together with use_max_tag.

ignored_tags

Ignore certain tags while computing the max tag. Tags are separate by whitespaces. This option must be used together with use_max_tag. This can be useful to avoid some known badly versioned tags, so the newer tags won’t be “overridden” by the old broken ones.

sort_version_key

Sort the version string using this key function. Choose between parse_version and vercmp. Default value is parse_version. parse_version use pkg_resources.parse_version. vercmp use pyalpm.vercmp.

proxy

The HTTP proxy to use. The format is host:port, e.g. localhost:8087.

An environment variable NVCHECKER_GITHUB_TOKEN or a key named github can be set to a GitHub OAuth token in order to request more frequently than anonymously.

Check BitBucket

Check BitBucket for updates. The version returned is in date format %Y%m%d, e.g. 20130701.

bitbucket

The bitbucket repository, with author, e.g. lilydjwg/dotvim.

branch

Which branch to track? Default is the repository’s default.

use_max_tag

Set this to true to check for the max tag on BitBucket. Will return the biggest one sorted by pkg_resources.parse_version.

ignored_tags

Ignore certain tags while computing the max tag. Tags are separate by whitespaces. This option must be used together with use_max_tag. This can be useful to avoid some known badly versioned tags, so the newer tags won’t be “overridden” by the old broken ones.

sort_version_key

Sort the version string using this key function. Choose between parse_version and vercmp. Default value is parse_version. parse_version use pkg_resources.parse_version. vercmp use pyalpm.vercmp.

Check GitLab

Check GitLab for updates. The version returned is in date format %Y%m%d, e.g. 20130701.

gitlab

The gitlab repository, with author, e.g. Deepin/deepin-music.

branch

Which branch to track? Default: master.

use_max_tag

Set this to true to check for the max tag on BitBucket. Will return the biggest one sorted by pkg_resources.parse_version.

ignored_tags

Ignore certain tags while computing the max tag. Tags are separate by whitespaces. This option must be used together with use_max_tag. This can be useful to avoid some known badly versioned tags, so the newer tags won’t be “overridden” by the old broken ones.

sort_version_key

Sort the version string using this key function. Choose between parse_version and vercmp. Default value is parse_version. parse_version use pkg_resources.parse_version. vercmp use pyalpm.vercmp.

host

Hostname for self-hosted GitLab instance.

token

GitLab authorization token used to call the API.

Authenticated only.

To set a authorization token, you can set:

• a key named gitlab_{host} in the keyfile (where host is formed the same as the environment variable, but all lowercased).
• an environment variable NVCHECKER_GITLAB_TOKEN_{host} must provide that token. The host part is the uppercased version of the host setting, with dots (.) and slashes (/) replaced by underscores (_), e.g. NVCHECKER_GITLAB_TOKEN_GITLAB_COM.
• the token option

Check PyPI

Check PyPI for updates.

pypi

The name used on PyPI, e.g. PySide.

Check RubyGems

Check RubyGems for updates.

gems

The name used on RubyGems, e.g. sass.

Check NPM Registry

Check NPM Registry for updates.

npm

The name used on NPM Registry, e.g. coffee-script.

Check Hackage

Check Hackage for updates.

hackage

The name used on Hackage, e.g. pandoc.

Check CPAN

Check MetaCPAN for updates.

cpan

The name used on CPAN, e.g. YAML.

proxy

The HTTP proxy to use. The format is host:port, e.g. localhost:8087.

Check Packagist

Check Packagist for updates.

packagist

The name used on Packagist, e.g. monolog/monolog.

Check Local Pacman Database

This is used when you run nvchecker on an Arch Linux system and the program always keeps up with a package in your configured repositories for Pacman.

pacman

The package name to reference to.

strip-release

Strip the release part.

Check Arch Linux official packages

This enables you to track the update of Arch Linux official packages, without needing of pacman and an updated local Pacman databases.

archpkg

Name of the Arch Linux package.

strip-release

Strip the release part.

Check Debian Linux official packages

This enables you to track the update of Debian Linux official packages, without needing of apt and an updated local APT database.

debianpkg

Name of the Debian Linux source package.

suite

Name of the Debian release (jessie, wheezy, etc, defaults to sid)

strip-release

Strip the release part.

Check Ubuntu Linux official packages

This enables you to track the update of Ubuntu Linux official packages, without needing of apt and an updated local APT database.

ubuntupkg

Name of the Ubuntu Linux source package.

suite

Name of the Ubuntu release (xenial, zesty, etc, defaults to None, which means no limit on suite)

strip-release

Strip the release part.

Check Anitya

This enables you to track updates from Anitya (release-monitoring.org).

anitya

distro/package, where distro can be a lot of things like “fedora”, “arch linux”, “gentoo”, etc. package is the package name of the chosen distribution.

Check Android SDK

This enables you to track updates of Android SDK packages listed in sdkmanager --list.

android_sdk

The package path prefix. This value is matched against the path attribute in all <remotePackage> nodes in an SDK manifest XML. The first match is used for version comparisons.

repo

Should be one of addon or package. Packages in addon2-1.xml use addon and packages in repository2-1.xml use package.

Manually updating

This enables you to manually specify the version (maybe because you want to approve each release before it gets to the script).

manual

The version string.

Version Control System (VCS) (git, hg, svn, bzr)

Check a VCS repo for new commits. The version returned is currently not related to the version of the software and will increase whenever the referred VCS branch changes. This is mainly for Arch Linux.

vcs

The url of the remote VCS repo, using the same syntax with a VCS url in PKGBUILD (Pacman’s build script). The first VCS url found in the source array of the PKGBUILD will be used if this is left blank. (Note: for a blank vcs setting to work correctly, the PKGBUILD has to be in a directory with the name of the software under the path where nvchecker is run. Also, all the commands, if any, needed when sourcing the PKGBUILD need to be installed).

use_max_tag

Set this to true to check for the max tag. Currently only supported for git. This option returns the biggest tag sorted by pkg_resources.parse_version.

ignored_tags

Ignore certain tags while computing the max tag. Tags are separate by whitespaces. This option must be used together with use_max_tag. This can be useful to avoid some known badly versioned tags, so the newer tags won’t be “overridden” by the old broken ones.

Other

More to come. Send me a patch or pull request if you can’t wait and have written one yourself :-)

Bugs

• Finish writing results even on Ctrl-C or other interruption.

Footnotes