[MacTUG] Automating AutoPKG & Slack

[Donald Duff-McCracken]

With Dani and Keith’s encouragement I have been playing with AutoPKG. I started with AutoPKGr the GUI front end to AutoPKG. However, I decided to use just the command line AutoPKG as I was running into problems that were getting in the way of automating its operation.* I just created a script and launchagent to run AutoPKG

But one of the nice things that AutoPKGr had was Slack integration (to send updates via ‘webhooks’ to slack when updates happened). I figured out how to do that with my script I wrote so that satisfied that need. I am willing to share the script I wrote and my launchagent with anyone if they want to check it out. Feel free to offer me non-snarky suggestions for improvement (but as it only runs once a day on a server I am not that concerned about performance improvements).

BTW #1: I am moving away from using email as a way to get notices from servers, as things like webhook bots sending to Slack have numerous advantages (I can list if you like)
BTW #2: While we use slack as a team tool, its integration with other services (git, twitter, rss, etc etc and ease of using a webhook to send it information) makes it an interesting tool even if you do not use it for sending goofy gifs to your coworkers.


* AutoPkg expects you to verify and trust the recipes you run. To do so, you use AutoPKG to generate an “override” for each recipe you trust and want to run. Each override file contains some trust info that is verified when the recipe is run. This theoretically reduces the chances of something nasty happening. While you may need to occasionally generate a new ‘override’ file, AutoPKGr freaks out and seems to think they are needed all the time  -- For info on override files see  https://github.com/autopkg/autopkg/wiki/Autopkg-and-recipe-parent-trust-info if you are interested

------------------------------------
Donald Duff-McCracken
Technical Services Manager
Mapping, Analysis & Design
Faculty of Environment
University of Waterloo
(519) 888-4567 x32151
https://uwaterloo.ca/environment-computing/about/people
------------------------------------
This email communication is intended as a private communication for the sole use of the primary addressee and those individuals listed for copies in the original message. The information contained in this email is private and confidential and If you are not an intended recipient you are hereby notified that copying, forwarding or other dissemination or distribution of this communication by any means is prohibited.  If you are not specifically authorized to receive this email and if you believe that you received it in error please notify the original sender immediately.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/mactug/attachments/20170607/52655f14/attachment.html>