Archlinux.org's scrapper

According to the ArchWiki:

Read before upgrading the system

Before upgrading Arch, always read the latest Arch News to find out if there are any major software or configuration changes with the latest packages. Before upgrading fundamental software (such as the kernel, xorg, systemd, or glibc) to a new version, look over the appropriate forum to see if there have been any reported problems.

And they are right, one should be at least following the latest news before upgrading.

Heads up!

lsrdg/iscrap is just a damn small script, written by an un-developer and it has such a tiny functionality that it shouldn't even deserve your attention. It was written for personal use only.

If you are serious about checking everything before to upgrade system, you probably want to check these links out:

Pacmatic > Get emails about pending system updates with cron-pacmatic
Pacman/Tips and tricks - utilities

wiki.archlinux.org page with real tips.

However, I must admit that I've been a happy user and iscrap has been pretty helpful.

Iscrap

By default, Iscrap will just show the title of the latest 3 news from archlinux.org/news (optionally, before calling for $ sudo pacman -Syu). If the news's header is kind of new for you, you should probably avoid upgrading. In instead, go find out if you should do something about.

Optionally, there's the read command:

$ iscrap fetch


1 -  mesa  with libglvnd support is now in testing
2 -  Phasing out i686 support
3 -  xorg-server 1.19.1 is now in extra


$ iscrap read 2

             Phasing out i686 support 


             Due to the decreasing popularity of i686 among the developers and
             the
             community, we have decided to phase out the support of this
             architecture.
             The decision means that February ISO will be the last that allows
             to
             install 32 bit Arch Linux. The next 9 months are deprecation
             period,
             during which i686 will be still receiving upgraded packages.
             Starting
             from November 2017, packaging and repository tools will no longer
             require that from maintainers, effectively making i686 unsupported.
             However, as there is still some interest in keeping i686 alive, we
             would...

PS: I'm no ArchExpert. The words above are there only as a reminder that - damn!

I should have read that before!

Requirements

Archlinux (yay o/)
Python 3* with the requests, argparse, and bs4 modules.

take a look at requirements.txt for a complete list.

Installing

Getting ready

Your Archlinux most likely alrady have python. Just be sure the version is at least 3.6+:

$ python --version
Python 3.6.3

With PIP

If you know your way with Python and the command line, all you need is to install the requirements:

$ pip install -r requirements.txt

With Pacman

...or with Pacman in case you don't need pip for other stuff etc:

$ sudo pacman -S python-beautifulsoup4
$ sudo pacman -S python-requests

Clone this repository. From within the repository run:

$ git clone https://github.com/lsrdg/iscrap.git
$ cd iscrap/
$ python iscrap.py fetch

That's it.

Optionally, add the following to your .bash.rc:

# scrap archlinux.org before full upgrade
alias iscrap='python ~/PATH-TO/archlinux-iscrap/iscrap.py ; sudo pacman -Syu'

And now, in instead of moving to the directory and typing $ python iscrap.py -f every time, you can just type $ iscrap. And that's it.

A few things should also be noted:

Be sure to change /PATH-TO/ to the real path to the cloned repository.
the alias above (on the .bashrc) assumes that python calls python3.
if you really read 'till here your arch*/develp*/prog* kungfu's skill might be worse than mine and in this case, you shouldn't be trying to use it.

Usage

Just run $ iscrap and it will print the title of the latest 3 news - by default - and call $ sudo pacman -Syu. As of today (ho, well) it looks like this:

$ iscrap 


1 -  Phasing out i686 support
2 -  xorg-server 1.19.1 is now in extra 
3 -  OpenVPN 2.4.0 update requires administrative interaction 


[sudo] password for YOUR_USERNAME:

Heads up again!

The sudo is not on the script. It is on the bashrc. Just to be clear. Are you still reading? Go get pacmatic.

LICENSE

MIT License

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 to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR 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.