#293 Automatically check for updates

[Henry Pijffers]

It would be nice if OmegaT could check for itself whether there are newer versions available on SF, and offer the user to download and install them automatically. The user should then be able to choose to download and install, to defer a certain amount of time, or to never be bothered with that @%(*&$!(@*& message again.

Seeing the vast number of SF projects available, perhaps some clever person already created such functionality.

[Didier Briel]

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There is a specific project:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/luau/

Luau (Lib Update/AutoUpdate) provides basic autoupdate functionality to software projects, allowing not only software updates to propagate quickly through ones user base but also messages and configuration updates.

In C, unfortunately.

I found also something related (in Java):
http://jnlp.sourceforge.net/netx/

Netx is a high-quality implementation of the Java Network Launching Protocol (JNLP). It downloads code over the network for applications and applets, caches it, and runs it in a secure environment.

General Features of netx and JNLP:
Quality: Highest quality open-source JNLP client.
Modular: Easily add JNLP capabilities to any applications.
Security: Run code in a sandbox or log its activities.
Small Size: Loads from a ~130K JAR file.
Auto-Update: No special code needed to auto-update apps.

Didier

[Aaron Madlon-Kay]

I have a prototype of this functionality prepared:
https://omegat.ci.cloudbees.com/job/omegat-prototype/88/

It is currently blocked due to the following issue:

OmegaT must look up the current newest version online; the way to do so that makes the most sense is to fetch a "blessed" copy of Version.properties (sourceforge.net) published to the project's SourceForge web hosting area.

For security purposes this fetching should be done over HTTPS, never HTTP. SourceForge does support HTTPS, but only with settings that Java is incompatible with prior to 1.8u161.

The "standard" version of OmegaT requires Java 6; until we can move the current "latest" version up to "standard" status, we can't switch SourceForge to HTTPS without breaking the Java Web Start distribution.

[Didier Briel]

Implemented in SVN [r10401]

Didier

[Didier Briel]

Closed in the released version 4.1.5 of OmegaT.

Didier