Can one query full name (or version) of selected packages at pypi?

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Caleb Hattingh wrote:
> So: I would like to query the package index with a short name (perhaps
> wildcarded), and retrieve either the full name (from which to strip the
> ver.) or version number, and compare it with what I have on disk.  At
> this stage, just reporting the differences is fine.
> 
> I could do these steps myself with normal http access and
> screen-scraping, but is there already such a system/script somewhere?

You can query the Cheeseshop through XML-RPC, see

http://www.inkdroid.org/journal/2005/08/11/pypi-over-xmlrpc/

>  Alternatively, how do you all keep versions of python addons
> up-to-date?  Manually?

I use Debian; this automatically gives me updates of all of
my packages.

Regards,
Martin