apt-watch 0.4.0 README
		 Daniel Burrows <[email protected]>
		 John Lightsey <[email protected]>

0) What is it?

This is a applet (presently only for Gnome) to watch for updates to
packages on your system.

1) What good is it?

This applet is meant primarily for users of stable Debian releases, so they
can be informed when important upgrades to their system are available.  It
takes the place of running "apt-get update" periodically to check for new
packages.  It will pay particular attention to packages on security.debian.org.

2) The version number looks low.  Is this program safe to use?

While no program is bug-free, I certainly believe that apt-watch is
usable on a day-to-day basis.  The low version number is more due to
missing features than to instability in the present version.

See TODO for a list of features to be added before 1.0.

3) Why did you write a Gnome applet and not use the notification-area?

As far as I know, the notification area doesn't support the stuff that the
panel does automatically, such as having multiple instances of the program
that don't step on each other's configuration, starting the program
automatically on login, and so on.

4) What is the relationship between apt-watch-backend and apt-watch-gnome?

In Daniel Burrows' original implementation of apt-watch there is a single
package which contains three pieces.  The apt-watch Gnome applet provides
configuration and control capabilities.  The apt-watch-slave program
periodically checks for updates and downloads them when appropriate.
The apt-watch-auth-helper queries for the root password then moves the
downloaded updates and package indexes to the correct location before launching
a user-selected package management tool.

Since only the Gnome applet is dependent on a particular window manager,
I split the package into separate -gnome (applet only) and -backend
(slave and auth-helper) packages.

5) Why isn't there a KDE applet?

An apt-watch-kde package is in the works but not yet a fully functional
replacement for apt-watch-gnome.  I don't use KDE on a regular basis and
would appreciate help reimplementing the Gnome applet as a KDE applet.
If you're interested in helping with this effort contact [email protected].

6) Why isn't there an X=(xfce/Notification Area/NeXTStep/Amiga/etc) frontend?

For the same reason that apt-watch-kde isn't available.