Keeping your software up to date

2005-11-24 14:22:58

Introducing XAVS...

Everybody uses a large amount of different software packages. On your desktop you have a variety of applications, ranging from small utilities to save you some time to full-blown office packages and development environments. If you are running a server, it's even worse, because you also have to keep track of security fixes. That is, If you aren't lucky enough to run Debian with no self compiled packeges at all.

How convenient could that be to have a standardized feed format similar to RSS that informs you about updates of the software packages you use. And it's not dependent on the platform the developers are using, whether they are hosted on sourceforge or have their own websites.

XAVS (xml application version syndication) shall be a xml-based rss-like standardized file format for publishing information about updates of software packages.

According to the plan a software vendor can link to an xml file on his server (exactly like RSS for News/Blogs/Images) where he stores information about the latest version of his software packages. This should be easy to automate when publishing the "new software" announcement.

Customers can subscribe to these feeds of the software they use and easily see when updates are available. A simple script (e.g. in php) could track the versions you have installed (after entering them once) and then can display only those urls/direct download links of software that's newer than your versions.

Discuss here or mail me if you have any comments.

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