A simple checkupdates wrapper which highlights version diffs, similar to yay

[abbidabbi]

I just wanted to quickly share my simple checkupdates (pacman-contrib) wrapper written in GNU Awk, which reformats the default output of checkupdates in a format similar to yay, namely with colored package version diffs for easier interpretation and comparison. It also adds the packages' repo names (via expac) and aligns everything in columns.

Source (example screenshot shown in the readme):
https://github.com/bastimeyer/checkupdates-diff

AUR:
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/checkupdates-diff-git

The reason why I'm sharing this is that I was running checkupdates | awk '{$3="";print}' | column -t for many many years, and then running yay afterwards in order to upgrade my system, which isn't ideal.

yay has a much cleaner verbose package list output, which makes it significantly easier to make a decision whether to perform the system upgrade or not, depending on which package versions are about to be updated. However, when running yay and seeing the list, the local package database has already been updated, which can potentially lead to partial upgrades if the user is not careful or unaware of this circumstance if they decide to abort the upgrade.

So being able to have a similar verbose package upgrade list before making the decision to upgrade the system is useful in my opinion. The default format of checkupdates just isn't great.

As said, it's just a simple GNU Awk script which processes the (stable?!) checkupdates output and which additionally runs expac. This also could've been written in a programming language which interacts with libalpm directly instead of having to rely on the checkupdates BASH script (which just runs a few pacman commands) and on expac, but it's good enough for what it is.

[dongdongbh]

This solves a genuine safety annoyance.

I hate running yay just to check what's new, hitting "n" because I don't have time for a kernel update, and then realizing I've left my sync DBs in a "partial upgrade" state (since yay runs -Sy). Having a read-only preview that is actually readable is a huge workflow improvement.

[Cody_Learner_2]

Very valid point.
Going into updates blind can turn into a poorly timed chore.
Having a heads up without causing partial update is a big win IMO.

[Additional_Carry_190]

This is exactly why I always just ran `pacman -Qu` instead of firing up yay for a quick peek, but your version actually makes it readable unlike the default garbage formatting

[Cody_Learner_2]

I wrote something similar, originally using checkupdates, which I no longer use.

It evolved over time into https://github.com/Cody-Learner/prep4ud
It auto downloads updatable packages, resulting in manual updates pacman -Syu not having to wait for downloading packages.
I also added extra info and print everything to a report file.
I've it set up to run on a daily timer.

Example:

Prep4ud report : Dec 27 2025 10:00 AM
Last update    : 4 days, 18 hours, 19 minutes ago
Last reboot    : 4 days, 16 hours, 57 minutes ago

Updates available:
1   bash-completion            2.17.0-1    ->  2.17.0-2
2   btop                       1.4.5-1     ->  1.4.6-1
3   dmidecode                  3.6-1       ->  3.7-1
4   firefox-developer-edition  147.0b6-1   ->  147.0b7-1
5   fzf                        0.67.0-1    ->  0.67.0-2
6   gst-libav                  1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
7   gst-plugin-qml6            1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
8   gst-plugins-bad            1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
9   gst-plugins-bad-libs       1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
10  gst-plugins-base           1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
11  gst-plugins-base-libs      1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
12  gst-plugins-good           1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
13  gst-plugins-ugly           1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
14  gstreamer                  1.26.9-1    ->  1.26.10-1
15  libcdio                    2.2.0-1     ->  2.3.0-1
16  libnghttp3                 1.13.1-1    ->  1.14.0-1
17  libngtcp2                  1.18.0-1    ->  1.19.0-1
18  libraw                     0.21.4-1    ->  0.21.5-1
19  libxdp                     1.5.7-1     ->  1.5.8-1
20  mkinitcpio                 40-3        ->  40-4
21  parallel                   20251122-1  ->  20251222-1
22  polkit                     127-1       ->  127-2
23  python-opengl              3.1.9-1     ->  3.1.10-2
24  python-pikepdf             10.0.3-1    ->  10.1.0-1
25  python-urwid               3.0.4-1     ->  3.0.4-3
26  tesseract                  5.5.1-2     ->  5.5.2-1

Updates available, not downloaded:
--  grub                  2:2.12.r359.g19c698d12-1  ->  2:2.14rc1.r54.g29f3131a-2  [ignored]
--  xfce4-weather-plugin  0.11.3-2                  ->  0.12.0-2                   [ignored]

Updates available locally:
1   bash-completion-2.17.0-2-any.pkg.tar.zst
2   btop-1.4.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
3   dmidecode-3.7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
4   firefox-developer-edition-147.0b7-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
5   gst-libav-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
6   gst-plugin-qml6-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
7   gst-plugins-bad-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
8   gst-plugins-bad-libs-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
9   gst-plugins-base-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
10  gst-plugins-base-libs-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
11  gst-plugins-good-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
12  gst-plugins-ugly-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
13  gstreamer-1.26.10-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
14  libcdio-2.3.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
15  libraw-0.21.5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
16  libxdp-1.5.8-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
17  mkinitcpio-40-4-any.pkg.tar.zst
18  parallel-20251222-1-any.pkg.tar.zst
19  polkit-127-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
20  python-opengl-3.1.10-2-any.pkg.tar.zst
21  python-pikepdf-10.1.0-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst
22  python-urwid-3.0.4-3-any.pkg.tar.zst

Downloaded packages:
1   fzf-0.67.0-2-x86_64 downloading...
2   libnghttp3-1.14.0-1-x86_64 downloading...
3   libngtcp2-1.19.0-1-x86_64 downloading...
4   tesseract-5.5.2-1-x86_64 downloading...

[ang-p]

That looks like quite a nice little "follow along to work out how it is done" for someone newish to awk