Keep the Ollama version up to date

[gunamata]

With the current extension setup, if a new version of Ollama is available after the extension is installed then users need to uninstall and re-install the extension to get the latest Ollama version, or upgrade Ollama outside Rancher Desktop.

We need to document this and eventually provide a better way of getting latest Ollama versions.

[jandubois]

We need to document this and eventually provide a better way of getting latest Ollama versions.

If you want to get the latest Ollama, then you should install it outside of the extension. We will automatically pick up the ollama binary if it is installed in the default locations used by the upstream installer and only provide our own version if we can't find it.

In general Rancher Desktop will alway provide additional utilities at a specific version, and the only way to update them is to update Rancher Desktop itself. That makes sure that the user is using the utilities that have gone through our QA process. Users can always install their own version ahead of ours in the PATH if they want to.

Now we can argue that the extension is not really part of Rancher Desktop, so these rules don't apply (so we can have it install the "latest" version of Ollama instead of a fixed version). But we don't need to provide yet another mechanism to keep updating the internally installed version.

One thing we might want to think about is: if we upgrade Rancher Desktop, should we uninstall and reinstall all extensions included in the catalog, so the user gets the latest version of the extension automatically? That would need an issue in the main repo.

[gunamata]

should we uninstall and reinstall all extensions included in the catalog, so the user gets the latest version of the extension automatically?

I think this approach works if we don't the delete model files as part of the extension uninstall.

[jandubois]

if we don't the delete model files as part of the extension uninstall.

We are never deleting models¹. And we only delete Ollama itself if it is downloaded by the extension into the extension directory (because the extension directory itself will be removed). But we will never delete an Ollama version installed directly by the user.

Footnotes

1. We need to document this, so users can reclaim the disk space themselves. ↩