I wrote a quick little script this morning to notify myself of updates to MacPorts via the Mac OS X notification app Growl. The script is a bash script that is designed to run as root from a cronjob (as the port sync command requires root permissions). You can find the script committed in my dotfiles repository on github. For convenience, I pasted the script below, though the copy on github will always be the most up-to-date copy.
#!/bin/bash # # Notify of MacPort updates via Growl on Mac OS X # # Author: Chris Streeter http://www.chrisstreeter.com # Requires: Growl Notify Extra to be installed (but fails gracefully). Info # about how to get the extra is at http://growl.info/extras.php TERM_APP='/Applications/Terminal.app' PORT_EXEC='/opt/local/bin/port' GROWL_NOTIFY='/usr/local/bin/growlnotify' GROWL_TITLE="MacPort Update(s) Available" GROWL_ARGS="-n 'MacPorts' -d $GROWL_NOTIFY -a $PORT_EXEC" $PORT_EXEC sync 2>&1 > /dev/null outdated=`$PORT_EXEC outdated` if echo $outdated | grep -q 'No installed ports are outdated.' ; then if [ -e $GROWL_NOTIFY ]; then # No updates available $GROWL_NOTIFY $GROWL_ARGS -m '' -t "No MacPort Updates Available" fi else # We've got an outdated port or two # Nofity via growl if [ -e $GROWL_NOTIFY ]; then lc=$((`echo "$outdated" | wc -l` - 1)) outdated=`echo "$outdated" | tail -$lc | cut -d " " -f 1` message=`echo "$outdated" | head -5` if [ "$outdated" != "$message" ]; then message="Some of the outdated packages are: $message" else message="The following packages are outdated: $message" fi # Send to growlnotify echo "$message" | $GROWL_NOTIFY $GROWL_ARGS -s -t $GROWL_TITLE fi fi
Assuming the script is at ~/bin/port-update-notifier, you can install the script to a crontab by running sudo crontab -e, then adding the line 0 12 * * * /Users/<username>/bin/port-update-notifier to the end of the file (substituting <username> for your username, or wherever you’ve put the script). I’ve chosen to run the script every day at noon because my computer is likely to be on and connected to a network.