jmtd → log → dsafilter → dsafilter 20th Anniversary

Happy 20^th birthday, dsafilter!

dsafilter is a mail filter I wrote two decades ago to solve a problem I had: I was dutifully subscribed to debian-security-announce to learn of new security package updates, but most were not relevant to me.

The filter creates a new, summarizing mail, reporting on whether the DSA was applicable to any package installed on the system running the filter, and attached the original DSA mail for reference. Users can then choose to drop mails for packages that aren't relevant.

In 2005 I'd been a Debian user for about 6 years, I'd met a few Debian developers in person and I was interested in getting involved. I started my journey to Developer later that same year. I published dsafilter, and I think I sent an announcement to debian-devel, but didn't do a great deal to socialise it, so I suspect nobody else is using it.

That said, I have been for the two decades, and I still am! What's notable to me about that is that I haven't had to modify the script at all to keep up with software changes, in particular, from the interpreter. I wrote it as a Ruby script. If I had chosen Perl, it would probably be the same story, but if I'd chosen Python, there's no chance at all that it would still be working today.

If it sounds interesting to you, please give it a try. I think it might be due some spring cleaning.