I wrote a quick little script this morning to notify myself of updates
to MacPorts via the Mac OS X notification app Growl. The script
is a bash script that is designed to run as root from a cronjob (as the
port sync command requires root permissions). You can find the script
committed in my dotfiles repository on github. For convenience, I
pasted the script below, though the copy on github will always be
the most up-to-date copy:
#!/bin/bash## Notify of MacPort updates via Growl on Mac OS X## Author: Chris Streeter http://www.chrisstreeter.com# Requires: Growl Notify Extra to be installed (but fails gracefully). Info# about how to get the extra is at http://growl.info/extras.TERM_APP='/Applications/Terminal.app'PORT_EXEC='/opt/local/bin/port'GROWL_NOTIFY='/usr/local/bin/growlnotify'GROWL_TITLE="MacPort Update(s) Available"GROWL_ARGS="-n 'MacPorts' -d $GROWL_NOTIFY -a $PORT_EXEC"$PORT_EXEC sync 2>&1 > /dev/null outdated=`$PORT_EXEC outdated`if echo$outdated | grep -q 'No installed ports are outdated.' ; then if[ -e $GROWL_NOTIFY]; then# No updates available$GROWL_NOTIFY$GROWL_ARGS -m '' -t "No MacPort Updates Available"fielse# We've got an outdated port or two# Notify via growlif[ -e $GROWL_NOTIFY]; thenlc=$((`echo"$outdated" | wc -l`-1))outdated=`echo"$outdated" | tail -$lc | cut -d " " -f 1`message=`echo"$outdated" | head -5`if["$outdated" !="$message"]; thenmessage="Some of the outdated packages are:$message"elsemessage="The following packages are outdated:$message"fi# Send to growlnotifyecho"$message" | $GROWL_NOTIFY$GROWL_ARGS -s -t $GROWL_TITLEfifi
Assuming the script is at ~/bin/port-update-notifier, you can install
the script to a crontab by running sudo crontab -e, then adding the
line 0 12 * * * /Users/<username>/bin/port-update-notifier to the end
of the file (substituting <username> for your username, or wherever
you've put the script). I've chosen to run the script every day at noon
because my computer is likely to be on and connected to a network.