dotfiles VS misc-updater

Here's my dotfiles repository [1], which is used to sync my little scripts and config files between my different systems (Mac/Linux). I first heard about it here [2].

[1] https://github.com/benwinding/dotfiles

[2] https://zachholman.com/2010/08/dotfiles-are-meant-to-be-fork...

[1] Dotfiles are a way to speed up your workflow. Basically just saving your system scripts to a Git repo, which allows you to manage & iterate on them easily. Also makes it easy to move environments and sync between machines etc..

[1] https://github.com/holman/dotfiles

> Ubuntu Flavors Agree to Stop Using Flatpak

Yayy!!!

> And to focus their efforts exclusively on deb,

Yayyy!!!

> and snap.

... oh.

Honestly I avoid flatpak/snap/etc like the plague. Every time I've used them, some sort of device or file can't be accessed, or something isn't working. If I need anything that isn't covered by apt repositories, I just compile from source now, and have my own system for detecting updates which works pretty well. (https://github.com/tpapastylianou/misc-updater if anyone's interested).

I have a nice little script for managing "MISC" packages: Manually Installed or Source Compiled.

https://github.com/tpapastylianou/misc-updater

In full honesty, I'm as proud of the "MISC" acronym as of the script itself. I'm secretly hoping the acronym catches on for referring to any stuff outside the control of a system's standard package management.

What do people use to check for updates when it comes to programs they installed manually / compiled from source instead of relying on their distro's repositories?

I made this for myself for this purpose: https://github.com/tpapastylianou/misc-updater

(pretty chuffed about the MISC acronym btw :p )

Often enough, when I see something like this, the real value isn't the software itself, but the idea that perhaps the issue it addresses is be worth thinking about a bit more. The solution itself may be trivial, but have a large impact.

E.g. I have created [0] the simplest of scripts for managing updates for manually-installed / source-compiled applications (something I've dubbed "misc", very proud of this backronym :p).

The script itself is extremely simple (just a list of greps over latest release announcement urls), but it has solved a big problem for me, of helping me keep such "misc" items seamlessly up-to-date.

[0]: https://github.com/tpapastylianou/misc-updater