Forest is a web-based, cross-platform update management system. After trying out Canonical’s Landscape service a few years ago, I found that I liked the ability to point-and-click to keep servers updated, but didn’t really use any of its other features. Also, the cost was prohibitive for the company I work at, and doubly so for personal use at home. Around that time, I started writing some scripts to figure out when updated packages where available for a server, and from that effort Forest has sprouted.

I chose the name “Forest” because of the saying “can’t see the forest for the trees“, meaning that sometimes keeping up with package updates gets in the way of managing a network of servers. Forest (hopefully) helps reduce the amount of time spent checking for and installing updates on servers. It’s also useful for that lone PC in the lab on the other side of the building where no one ever has time to wait for Windows updates – just set up a scheduled task, and Forest will take care of updates when requested by the web interface.

Forest is still very much under development. One of the biggest things missing right now is security, and because of this DO NOT use Forest in a non-trusted environment.
Source code for Forest can be found on Github: https://github.com/njcrawford/forest

Packages for Ubuntu are in my PPA.

PS: If you find a bug in Forest, please report it on Github. Thanks!