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A new version of kalu - upgrade notifier for Arch Linux - has been released.

Two main changes with this version. Firstly, the addition of two command-line options - --manual-checks (-m) and --auto-checks (-a) - to run manual/auto checks from command line. No GUI will be used at all, everything gets printed on stderr/stdout (using the same templates as for notifications).

This can be done without the need for a DISPLAY/running X server (i.e. no GTK init performed), thus works from a tty or through SSH. This can also be useful to use kalu from scripts.

Alongside those options is a configure option (--disable-gui) to make kalu a small CLI-only binary (i.e. no dependency to GTK nor libnotify), which could be useful on GUIless box (e.g. servers), where kalu can then still be used to check for upgrades, watched packages, etc

(Running this CLI kalu without arguments will do the same as using --manual-checks)

And then, there were improvments & fixes on the news parser, mainly with support for links. As expected, links will now be in blue & underlined, the URL available as tooltip, and clicking it will open it in your default browser.

Opening the URL is actually done via xdg-open Although I just realized, right after uploading the new version to the AUR in fact, that this wasn't really the best way to go.

A better solution than hardcoding the use of xdg-open would be to introduce a new option, and that's what I did. The code is already done, though it's not in this version. But next version will also use xdg-open by default, but let you change it to whatever replacement you use, or even your web browser directly. Up to you.

(So if you don't have xdg-utils on your system and don't want to install it just for kalu, but want to be able to click on links, you can download the code from the repo (branch default) and you'll then have the option available (under Misc).)

Downloads and whatnot

Thanks to all those who reported bugs or suggested features.

kalu is released under GNU GPL v3+ The source code is available on this BitBucket repository, where bugs/suggestions can be added to the issue tracker.

The release tarball can be downloaded here; You can also find a PKGBUILD in the AUR.

And of course, as always, new bug reports, suggestions or any other form of constructive criticism is very much welcome.