A Shell Alias for Getting Outdated Packages in Arch, Debian and macOS
I run this from time to time because it's faster than starting a system update and then canceling it if I only want to see the updates.
On Arch you can run sudo pacman -Syu --print to do a dry run to get an idea
of what will be updated and downloaded without doing it. You can also run a 2nd
command if you want to see AUR package updates. But we can do better if all we
want to see are potential version updates from A to B.
An alias is nice here because we can run fast dedicated commands to check for
updates from both package sources. There’s even options for Debian / Ubuntu and
macOS too with apt and brew.
Here’s the commit from my dotfiles that added aliases for each supported OS / distro that my dotfiles supports.
# Arch
This depends on having the
pacman-contrib
package installed for checkupdates and yay
for AUR packages. My dotfiles have an install script that installs these for
you.
alias outdated="checkupdates && printf '\n\n' && yay -Qua"
Here’s what the output looks like on my system:
$ outdated
docker 1:29.2.1-1 -> 1:29.3.0-1
groff 1.24.0-1 -> 1.24.0-2
libuv 1.52.0-1 -> 1.52.1-1
taglib 2.2-1 -> 2.2.1-1
wiremix 0.9.0-1 -> 0.10.0-1
openssl-1.1 1.1.1.w-2 -> 1.1.1.w-9
The top section has official Arch packages and the bottom lists AUR packages.
# Debian / Ubuntu
This requires no external dependencies and it gets all packages that can be updated.
alias outdated="sudo apt-get update -qq && apt list --upgradable"
Here’s what the output looks like:
$ outdated
base-files/stable 13.8+deb13u3 amd64 [upgradable from: 13.8+deb13u2]
bash/stable 5.2.37-2+b7 amd64 [upgradable from: 5.2.37-2+b5]
libc-bin/stable 2.41-12+deb13u1 amd64 [upgradable from: 2.41-12]
libc6/stable 2.41-12+deb13u1 amd64 [upgradable from: 2.41-12]
libcap2/stable 1:2.75-10+b3 amd64 [upgradable from: 1:2.75-10+b1]
libssl3t64/stable-security 3.5.4-1~deb13u2 amd64 [upgradable from: 3.5.4-1~deb13u1]
openssl-provider-legacy/stable-security 3.5.4-1~deb13u2 amd64 [upgradable from: 3.5.4-1~deb13u1]
openssl/stable-security 3.5.4-1~deb13u2 amd64 [upgradable from: 3.5.4-1~deb13u1]
sqv/stable 1.3.0-3+b2 amd64 [upgradable from: 1.3.0-3]
# macOS
This requires no external dependencies and it gets all packages that can be updated.
alias outdated="brew update --quiet && brew outdated --formula && print '\n' && brew outdated --casks"
Here’s what the output looks like:
$ outdated
librsvg (2.61.2) < 2.61.3
nginx (1.29.4) < 1.29.5
zoom (5.17.1.31580) != 5.17.5.33531
The top section are regular brew packages and the bottom are casks.
The video below shows running these and a small bonus if you’re using Arch
because I also modified my pkg wrapper script to support pkg outdated [--aur] to see more details about each package. I’ve done videos about this wrapper
before.
# Demo Video
Timestamps
- 0:42 – Arch
- 1:24 – Debian / Ubuntu
- 2:26 – macOS
- 2:54 – Looking at the code
- 4:44 – Bonus command on Arch
Will you use this on your system? Let me know below.