app version tracking

[ImAMacGuy]

How do you keep track of all the apps that need updates? For instance, Java, Flash, office, camtasia, and all the other apps that need to get rebundled when an update is out (and when the update is available)?

[JPDyson]

This forum. Also, for starters:

Adobe: http://blogs.adobe.com/psirt/
Oracle: https://blogs.oracle.com/security/

[mm2270]

Yeah, this forum is actually becoming one of the best and fastest resources for staying on top of updates. Someone here always notices a new version of the major applications and plug-ins long before I ever do (and hopefully posts here about it)

A while ago I had looked at keeping tabs on iusethis.com, as it seemed promising, but its really not kept up to date at all, so its very unreliable unfortunately. JAMFNation is emerging as the best source for this stuff IMO.

[Chris_Hafner]

Google.
I'm actually serious, though I have known several folks to use version tracker.

[gmarnin]

You may want to check out AutoPkg: https://github.com/autopkg

[golbiga]

+1 to @gmarnin. I started using AutoPkg and it's helped out a lot with this.

[ImAMacGuy]

@gmarnin/golbiga - is there a support forum for that? I tried on 3 machines, 2 won't download the recipes, the other one errors out when I try to run it :(. Although I think the last one is a bug in 10.9, I saw something re: that in the bug list about the last one though.

[gmarnin]

jwojda,

I can't talk about 10.9 on this site but I would be running AutoPkg in 10.8

You can report issues on the Github issues tracker or pop into ##osx-server on irc

http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=##osx-server
or you can use an IRC client:
IRC Server - irc.freenode.net
IRC Channel - ##osx-server

[mm2270]

I've been looking at autopkg as well, and its very promising. But. unless I'm misunderstanding, autopkg isn't going to somehow magically alert you to a new version of an app, is it? I think you still need to be aware of new versions and then autopkg makes it much easier to download the latest version and package it up using a recipe. Isn't this the way it works?

[golbiga]

You could set up a Jenkins server and have it automate everything for you. http://jenkins-ci.org/

[gmarnin]

mm2270,

AutoPkg alone won't automagically alert you to a new version of an app but you can automate the process using other freely available tools.

Watch this video on AutoPkg which includes ways to automate it: http://docs.macsysadmin.se/2013/video/Day2Session4.mp4

[ImAMacGuy]

I was able to get it working after I installed Git Desktop on a 10.8.5 machine and was able to package quickly and easily.

However, I noticed that some apps were out of date (OmniGraffle downloaded ver 5.4.4 when v6 was out).

[gmarnin]

You should file a bug report on the github site.

[mm2270]

@gmarnin, thanks for the link. Very interesting. I'll be taking a closer look at these tools.

[mm2270]

@jwojda,
Can you post the link you used for Git Desktop? I'm seeing the same issue when trying to pull down recipes. The specific error includes the line: No git binary could be found! so it apparently needs some additional binaries that aren't included in the autopkg.pkg. Would be nice if that information was included somewhere on the wiki or the github page, but I don't see any mention of that.

[gmarnin]

See the Installation and configuration section on https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg/wiki/Getting-Started

[mm2270]

Thanks once again! So strange, I looked over that getting started page and I somehow didn't see that section. I must be tired today : /