What AM 9.9.4 Changes Mean for Your AppImage Library
Version 9.9.4 of the AppMan (AM) toolbox adds a two‑week scan of every GitHub‑hosted app, flags repositories that have been archived or haven’t seen a release in over a year, and trims the downgrade list when snapshots are present. In practice you’ll see more warnings about stale packages, a handful of new entries, and a slightly tighter rollback command.
Spotting Archived and Obsolete Apps
The biggest visible shift is the automatic classification of “archived” versus “obsolete.” AM now pulls the repository status flag from GitHub and compares the date of the latest release tag. If a repo was marked archived in 2025 (like the author’s own Skype fork) or its last tagged version dates back to 2018 (as with Akasha), AM will list it under the new “archived‑apps” file.
Why this matters: I’ve watched several users try to install an AppImage that was still listed as current, only to have the installer fail because the upstream binary had been removed months earlier. The new check catches those dead ends before they waste bandwidth or break scripts.
More Apps, But Is Bigger Always Better?
The release bumps the total catalog from 2 779 to 2 842 entries, adding 63 programs across AppImage and other portable formats. Most of the newcomers are niche tools (starship‑SF64 port, OpenCloud, LeShade) that won’t see daily use unless you’re hunting for a specific hobbyist app. If your workflow already covers the common utilities—Firefox, VLC, GIMP—the extra entries feel more like filler than a genuine upgrade.
Downgrade List Gets Shorter
When you invoke am downgrade or --rollback, AM now prompts to exclude “snapshot” versions by default. The prompt reads “Exclude snapshot releases? (Y/n)” and will hide duplicate entries that differ only by timestamp. This keeps the list readable, but it can be a nuisance if you rely on those snapshots for testing bleeding‑edge builds. Pressing “n” brings them back, so the change is reversible.
Template Mode Warns About Name Collisions
The -t/--template flag now checks whether an app name already exists in the database before creating a new entry. If you paste a raw GitHub URL and the script extracts a duplicate name, it will halt and ask for confirmation instead of silently overwriting. The safety net is welcome; I’ve seen a friend accidentally replace the “filelight” template with a fork that pointed at an entirely different binary, which caused confusion when trying to update later.
To sum it up
Overall, 9.9.4 feels like a maintenance sweep rather than a feature dump. It tightens up the catalog, warns you about dead ends, and trims some noisy output. If you run AM on a headless machine that syncs hundreds of AppImages nightly, the extra checks will likely shave off minutes of wasted retries.
For a detailed change log and download links, check out the linked Github page below:
Release "AM" 9.9.4
Report outdated apps, from archived sources, and potentially vulnerable It's Valentine's Day, the holiday of lovers and... regrets! I won't be here to comfort you about your failed relationships (I...
