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Ask the host's system package manager which installed packages have newer versions available, as a hash of name to current and new.

Version

1.0.0 none stated

Depends

none beyond the core

License

Artistic-2.0

Its own test suite

1 file, green

Checked

2026-09-15 against Raku++ 3.28.0 and Rakudo 2026.08

Where it lives

raku.land · source

Install it #

$ rakupp install Package::Updates

zef install Package::Updates writes the same store; either installer leaves the module usable by both engines.

What it is for #

A monitoring script, a dashboard or a compliance check wants to know whether the machine it is on has pending package updates. Each package manager answers that differently — apt-get -s upgrade, pacman -Qu, yum check-update — and parsing three formats is three jobs.

This distribution picks the right one by probing for a marker directory and returns a single shape.

Asking #

use Package::Updates;

my $t0 = now;
my %updates = get-updates();
my $elapsed = now - $t0;

say 'returns a : ', %updates.^name;
say 'entries   : ', %updates.elems;
say 'Bool      : ', ?%updates;
say 'and it answered in under a second : ', $elapsed < 1;

returns a : Hash
entries   : 0
Bool      : False
and it answered in under a second : True

One exported sub, no arguments. Each value in a populated result is a hash of current and new.

How it decides #

use Package::Updates;

say 'the module probes for a marker directory:';
for </etc/apt /etc/pacman.d /etc/yum> -> $p {
    say sprintf('  %-16s exists : %s', $p, $p.IO.e);
}
say '  win32 kernel     : ', $*KERNEL.name eq 'win32';
say '';
say 'if none of the four matches, it returns an empty hash.';

the module probes for a marker directory:
  /etc/apt         exists : False
  /etc/pacman.d    exists : False
  /etc/yum         exists : False
  win32 kernel     : False

if none of the four matches, it returns an empty hash.

Which is the thing to know.

The one thing to know #

"No updates" and "I do not support this operating system" are the same return value.

There is no exception, no Failure, no flag and no way for a caller to tell the two apart. On a machine whose package manager is not one of the four, the result is {} — exactly what a fully up-to-date Debian box returns.

The set of hosts that silently answer {} is large: macOS, every BSD, Alpine and anything else using apk, Void, Gentoo, NixOS, and any Debian derivative where /etc/apt has been relocated.

A monitoring check written against this reports "all clear" on every one of them. Probe for the marker directory yourself first, as the example above does, and treat a miss as "unknown" rather than "clean".

Two things read from the source and worth flagging even though no machine here could exercise them. The apt path runs apt-get update and the pacman path runs pacman -Sy — both of which mutate system state and normally need root, which is a surprise from a function called get-updates. And the yum path shells out once per candidate package, so its cost is linear in the number of pending updates.

Where the two engines differ #

Nowhere. The probe, the timing and the empty result were identical on Raku++ and Rakudo.

The Windows path shells powershell ./get-updates.ps1 — a relative path resolved against the current working directory — and no such script is shipped in the distribution, so that branch cannot work as installed.

The distribution states no auth, and its source URL is an SSH remote rather than a browsable one.