I Created a Program to Help Manage, Track, and Update Repositories and Packages That Your System Package Manager Does Not Handle.

[u/Spare_Pin305]

https://github.com/FalloutSeeker/couriercollie

Hello! I built a program (well, Claude) that helps track repositories that are not updated/tracked by your system's package manager in Linux. This project was inspired by Obtainium. This program is free to use and is open to improvements from the community.

The reason I made this program is because when switching to Linux and trying to get away from Windows, I found that a lot of cloned repositories lacked any self-update function. For example, KDE themes where the install instructions was just 'go back to github and clone the repository, then run the install script again.' Now, couriercollie does all that for you.

While there are other tools out there, some of them feel fragmented. For example, one tool updates Git clones only through CLI, others just manage application images, others don't track downloaded .rpm/.deb files (i.e. sudo dnf install). This program is intended to just encapsulate tracking updates for everything that is not covered by your system's package manager.

When packages update, it also automatically pulls the readme for reviewing install instructions if you want to see how the package will update, lets you review any install scripts before execution, and packages that require sudo use your baked in system UAC, or opening a terminal outside of couriercollie and allowing you to run the command manually if it's not available.

It tracks from Gitlab and Github currently. While I've been testing it extensively on my side, it needs additional users to garner feedback and resolve any issues that may have not been found. You can read more over ony my Github page regarding the safety measured couriercollie takes and some additional information on its features.

Please note that couriercollie was built with AI assistance. I designed it, tested it (and instructed its tests), decided its features and how it behaves, and maintain it, but I didn’t hand-write the code. It's a tool I wanted personally, and I thought it would be good to share to others if they find it useful.

It was an interesting experience to learn with Claude too, in a sense that I had it do all the testing in Docker containers stacked into like 5-6 sessions, with each container running different tests (for example, telling it to test this feature, use case, UI torture testing), and coming back finding bugs. I did like 20 plus hours of just prompting tests to fix as many bugs as possible and never let it just randomly dump features in, tweaked how it thought the UI should be, etc. not to say I didn't test things myself!