Thanks to this year's Google Summer of Code (GSoC), a student developer took the initiative in working on an automated Gentoo Linux system updater to help begineers and ease the roll-out of security updates to users.

Thanks to GSoC participant Stepan Kulikov "LabBrat" there is now gentoo_update that can serve as an automated updater for Gentoo Linux systems. This can simplify the process of maintaining an up-to-date Gentoo system, reduce system administrative time, and improve the overall user experience. Those interested can see the final GSoC report on this Gentoo auto-updater.

The gentoo_update code is currently maintained via this GitHub repository . The default behavior with gentoo_update is to only deploy security updates from the Gentoo Linux Security Advisories (GLSA) by default. Alternatively the gentoo_update utility can also keep all system packages up-to-date.

Here's a video showing this Gentoo updater in action:

More details on this summer effort for auto-updating Gentoo systems via the Gentoo blog .