I would like to request a feature to allow snap publishers automatically notified software upstream releases by the Snap Store infrastructure, possible via:
- The publisher designs a scriptlet for checking upstream release(possibly via API querying or webpage parsing), this scriptlet should output a version string that matches the snap version
- The snap store’s infrastructure runs the scriptlet routinely (possibly in a containerized environment, with limited processing resources and a time limit) and got the upstream version string
- The snap store’s infrastructure compares the upstream version string and the snap’s version string in the stable channel, and when it’s not matched (a.k.a. upstream has a new release):
- Notify the publisher via e-mail or other means
- (Possibly if toggled) automatically trigger a snap rebuild and/or snap publish
The benefits:
- Snaps that use pre-built binaries from the upstream website without a new release notification mechanism
- Snaps that are not directly hooked to the upstream repository, and thus not able to support automated builds
- Snaps that have a non-GitHub upstream repository thus won’t benefit from the GitHub integration
- Maintainers that has no resources to do the routine check (or just lazy enough to not set up one)
Just my 2¢, request for comments.