This is a nice idea.

I'll think about a way to calculate / store and to provide this information via the API. Beware that the "time resolution" for the "since" field won't be more accurate than the standard refresh interval, which is currently 4 hours. If that's enough, then adding a since field into the individual entries shouldn't be too difficult.

To clarify, I would add a "since": "<date_time>" field into the objects in the response array, so it would only indicate the first time an individual package had broken dependencies, not the first time a specific broken dependency showed up, like this:

[
  {
    "source": "Java-WebSocket",
    "package": "Java-WebSocket",
    "epoch": "0",
    "version": "1.3.8",
    "release": "4.fc31",
    "arch": "noarch",
    "admin": "orphan",
    "repo": "rawhide",
    "repo_arch": "x86_64",
    "broken": [
      "mvn(net.iharder:base64)"
    ],
    "since": "2020-01-01T20:15:42T+00:00"
  },
  {
    "source": "Java-WebSocket",
    "package": "Java-WebSocket",
    "epoch": "0",
    "version": "1.3.8",
    "release": "4.fc31",
    "arch": "noarch",
    "admin": "orphan",
    "repo": "rawhide",
    "repo_arch": "aarch64",
    "broken": [
      "mvn(net.iharder:base64)"
    ],
    "since": "2020-04-01T20:15:42T+00:00"
  },
# (...)
]

I've implemented a version of this in commit https://pagure.io/ironthree/repochecker/c/bf437d82dc8c92980fa4c120cbac87ce9566edba?branch=master.

Does this sound good to you?

• combinations of package+repo+repo_arch are checked for already existing entries, and if one exists, the existing timestamp is reused, otherwise, "now" is set for the timestamp
• if no timestamp is available, the API returns a null value for "since" (should only occur in the few minutes before the initial data refresh with the new functionality is done)

Looks good, thanks a LOT @decathorpe !!!

Released as repochecker 0.2.0, and "deployed to production" (on a friday!).

The initial refresh is done, data with "since" fields are now returned by the API.

It's all initialized to be "since now" since I don't have any historical data, but it will become more interesting the longer the service runs :)

(on a friday!).

What a madman... :D

Thanks a lot. Oraculum/Packager Dashboard is already using it :)