Gnome Update Manager

[Sean Middleditch <sean middleditch iname com>]

I read somewhere (I think) that someone is making an Update Manager for
GNOME (download updates to GNOME/GNOME software automatically).  If not,
I'd like to do it.  I need something to code when I get mad at my other
projects (like right now).

I'd like to know if there's a nice FTP library usable by C that I can
embed in the program.  My basic idea for the program is that it will
download a single ASCII file from the GNOME FTP site.  The file will
contain all the packages and their versions on the site.  The program
will figure out which packages are not on the user's system, or which
have newer versions on the FTP site, and list those files, letting the
user select which ones she wants to download.  The files are downloaded,
and optionally, installed.  I would at first support only tarballs.  I
would have a configure "profile" selection, which lets the user select
from a list her system type, and it will give configure the proper
options (I could only include RedHat at first, until people send me the
needed options for other Linux distributions/UNIX variants).  Later I
could add RPM support.  Any other package support would have to be added
by other people, since I can't test those package variants without
cluttering up my poor system.

What do you think?  Good idea?  I could even make it into a generic
Update Manager, and other software developers could include update
profiles, so that the user can select to update from a different FTP
site.

Sean Middleditch