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Keeping up to date with new releases

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Evan Thoms edited this page Oct 6, 2022 · 4 revisions

Instead of downloading new releases as zip files when you know there has been a change to a tool or a new tool has been added, instead

  1. Get automatic notifications of new releases.
  2. If you don't already have git on your computer, install it.
  3. Clone this repository to your computer.
  4. Use git pull to download changes when you get notified of a new release.

If you need more information, read on:

Notifications of new releases

New releases for the toolbox are published as-needed when solutions to issues are written or new features are added. You can find out about new releases in two ways.

  1. Notice that there is a warning in the geoprocessing messages dialog when you run a tool that it is obsolete and a revised tool has been posted.
  2. 'Watch' this repository and get an email when there is a new release.

To watch the repository, first create a GitHub account. When logged in, go to the main page for this repo and look in the upper-right for the Watch button.

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Click the drop-down button and go down to Custom

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and then select Releases and Apply:

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To be honest, I don't know if you will get other emails from GitHub just by choosing Watch; it might be too noisy. But try it out and let us know how it works.

"Install" git

If you don't already have git on your computer, here is a simple way to get and use it that doesn't involve a full-blown installation that requires elevated privileges.

  1. Download the 64-bit Git for Windows Portable version. This downloads as an .exe file that, when double-clicked, extracts the git package to a folder of your choice. Put it anywhere you like and copy the path to the parent folder

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  1. In the Windows Search bar on your desktop type 'environment variables' and pick 'Edit environment variables for your account' from the results

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  1. Click on 'Path' and then 'Edit'

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  1. Click 'New' and paste the full path in the highlighted cell to where git was extracted. Click ok.
  2. Test that this worked by opening a Windows Command Prompt window. Type 'cmd' in the Windows Search bar. When the results show up, Command Prompt is already selected, so just press Enter to open it.

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Type git --version at the prompt and you should get a line like git version 2.30.0.windows.2

  1. Another option is to ignore setting an environment variable and use git-cmd.exe whenever you need to issue git commands. This file in the \git folder you extracted earlier. It opens a command prompt window configured to work with git. You can drag this file to the taskbar to pin it there for quick access.

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Clone the repo

  1. With either command prompt window open, navigate to the parent folder where you want the toolbox folder to be using cd

  2. copy and paste this command: git clone https://github.com/usgs/gems-tools-pro.git

  3. type dir to see that the gems-tools-pro directory has been added

(steps 1 - 3 above)

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(USGS users: when you try to clone, if you get the warning:

fatal: unable to access 'https://github.com/usgs/gems-tools-pro.git/': SSL certificate problem: unable to get local issuer certificate

you are probably connected to a VPN through Pulse Secure. Disconnect and try again).

Use git pull to get changes

Now, whenever you want to update the toolbox, open a command prompt, cd to gems-tools-pro and type git pull. To speed this up you could add create a batch file and save it in the default directory shown when the command prompt opens or pin a shortcut to the batch file to your taskbar.

Clone this wiki locally