Unified technology for software update

manpreet Best Answer 2 years ago

It is cumbersome to update different kinds of software one by one. In my case,

• For the Ubuntu Linux OS, I periodically do apt-get update and apt-get upgrade or apt-get dist-upgrade (this part can be automated).
• For Ruby language, I have to do particular things to upgrade.
• For Ruby libraries (gem), I have to periodically do gem update or gem update --system.
• For JQuery library, I have to periodically check its website and download the latest version.
• And so on.

I can write a script to automatically do these things, but it would be nice if there were a cross-platform unified established way where a user can just register all the software they want to be automatically updated, and a software will periodically check the relevant websites for updates and notice the user and/or automatically do the update when there is such update.

Does such technology exist? If not, what will be a promising line for such technology in the future? I have a feeling that it could be done by using something like RSS feed, where software developers will publish feeds whenever they update a software, and a specific reader takes care of the update process.

manpreet 2 years ago