#490 Add XML version information file to Lurch website as part of release

[Nathan Carter]

This script accomplishes the goal of giving Lurch easy access to more specific versioning information to use in its check-for-updates-on-launch activity. It comes in three phases:

1. Create a script that outputs an XML file containing all the information that Lurch may wish to know on launch about versioning information. This includes the version number of the latest version, the release notes for it, and the release date and time. It should automatically read all this information from the existing codebase, and output an XML file; an additional command-line parameter {{{--upload}}} should make it also then upload the resulting file to Lurch web space. (See next point.)
2. Add to the {{{how-to-do-a-release.txt}}} file in {{{trunk/utils/Lurch/}}} instructions on where to upload this file to the Lurch web space so that it is in the correct location for the Lurch app to download it on each launch. This should simply involve running the script mentioned above with the optional command line parameter {{{--upload}}}.
3. Change the code in {{{trunk/utils/Lurch/lurchversionchecker.cpp}}} to query that file and correctly XML-parse its content, rather than HTML-scrape the downloads page, as it does now.

Note that this does not handle the issue of library releases that happen in between app releases, as discussed in ticket #470. On the one hand, letting that ticket proceed as planned would mean not having to upload this file when just releasing new libraries. However, that also means less information; if we handle library releases under this same umbrella, then when Lurch notifies the user of a libraries update, that notification can come with release notes for the libraries themselves. Yes, I think I've convinced myself that that's the way to go here. So in addition to creating (as ticket #470 suggests) a special {{{release}}} folder for libraries, we should also store in that folder a release-notes file and include library release information in the XML file generated by the scripts in this ticket.

Another benefit of completing this ticket is that we will then have data, stored on our web server, of how often the Lurch app is launched, and from where, because the web server will track the sources of queries to this XML page, which no browser ever hits, only the Lurch app itself.

[Nathan Carter]

• owner changed from monks to nathancarter

• status changed from new to assigned