On 10/04/2026 7:28 pm, Rob van der Putten wrote:
Summery:
Do an IMS GET of Sid's Packages.xz
It is job of "apt-get update". It should use "if modified" HTTP headers.
Maybe it has been done already since there is apt-daily.timer.
If there is a new version, do a diff.
If the new version is different, xzcat Packages.xz to a little util that
reads to 'Package: Package_Name' (in this case 'Package: asterisk') and
then to 'Version: '.
apt-cache show PKG
Put the version in a file.
Compare with previous version.
Mail if different.
[...]
Meanwhile I found a relevant Debian web page that does work without
JavaScript;
This thread increases probability of invasion of aggressive scraping bots.
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asterisk
So tracking changes in this page from cron would probably work as well.
There is at least RSS feed for events related to the package
<https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asterisk/rss>.
Perhaps docs for the service describe other options.
On 10/04/2026 5:49 pm, Rob van der Putten wrote:
On 10/04/2026 04:36, Max Nikulin wrote:
Add sid repositories to apt configuration with negative priority to
prevent updates from it.
I tested this with 'bookworm-backports' (I still run bookworm), just to
make sure that it would not update anything. Which is exactly what
happens. As one would expect.
The same test with 'sid' however, does want to do an update. Which is
rather unexpected.
It is expected. Backports is not intended to upgrade all available
packages, so they have special repository metadata. That is why I wrote
about pinning the repository to negative priority. See
<https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch02.en.html>
Besides rmadison suggested by Nick, there may be more useful tools in
devscripts/debian-goodies/dpkg-dev.
