[FR] Built in Auto Updater

[MrDaisyBates]

I was trying to set up NovelWriter on my Fedora 43 machine. First went to the software center and noticed the flatpak isn't listed. Just an outdated Fedora one, it seems. Thought it a bit odd. Came to the repo and grabbed the AppImage (I have been sitting on the sidelines on this waiting for that EPUB Support!! Thank you, btw!)

Anyways, I use Gear Lever to mount the AppImages to my Gnome, etc. It also usually checks for updates for me. Point being, it suggested there was an update, and I updated, and it downgraded from the new beta. Lol. Not very helpful.

One solution for this could potentially be a built in auto updater. I really like the one Tangent has, for example. I just keep running the same ol' AppImage on it and it updates itself from the inside basically.

Anywho. Just a thought. Thanks again!

[vkbo]

Hi, yeah, I'm not sure how it parses the stable vs pre-release versions. I use the Python semantic versioning format. I have thought about adding an auto-updater, actually. I can look into it.

I also added an experimental flatpak to the beta release, but I'm not sure what the future of that will be now that Flathub has a zero-AI policy. While my app has a strict AI-policy for feature additions, I do use AI tools in my code editor for debugging, planning changes, fixing tests, doing bulky non-code things, and sometimes minor coding tasks although I generally prefer to write the app code myself. But basically, that is a no-go for Flathub. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[HeyMyian]

I looked into the Flathub "no AI" policy because I couldn't believe your application would be rejected for that reason and I'd love to see novelwriter on Flathub. And it seems that nW has a good chance of being accepted based on this because those criteria obviously apply to nW:

Exceptions may be granted for mature, well-maintained projects.

https://docs.flathub.org/docs/for-app-authors/requirements#generative-ai-policy

[vkbo]

Yeah, probably. I mean, it's not like the codebase is generated. I've spent several thousand hours writing this code. I tested Claude the last few weeks and got it to resolve some long running problems like memory leaks and threading issues, which was a great help. It's one of the things it's actually quite good at. It also found a solution to the line height issue, which I've been hacking at for a long time too.

I'm not gonna upload the pre-release anyway, so maybe I'll give it a try when I get to the 26.2 final release.

[MrDaisyBates]

It's pretty sad to hear that Flathub is so strict about that. I somewhat get it, but as a user, I'd kinda just prefer to be informed at best. I think most developers are generally well intended people and the open source world already has this big challenge of "this work is done from the goodness of my heart and I'm not getting paid for it." Setting such a strict policy seems kind of against those very people making kind contributions. But that's beside the point and out of scope, I suppose.

Anywho. That autoupdater screenshot is from Tangent. Taylor, the developer, is a really great guy with some serious programming chops. Very friendly and approachable generally speaking. If you ever wanted to pick his brain about the autoupdater, I'm sure he'd be happy to chime in (if you like the idea but implementation is what's stumping you).

Appreciate what you're doing regardless! <3 Thanks again.

[vkbo]

I do understand Flathub's position. They are three people maintaining it, and they're getting drowned by slop. Their previous policy had a less strict language, so the sloppers kept pushing back. That's a genuine problem in so many areas, not only software. It's also why I have a strict policy for contributions here. I haven't had much problems with slop and drive-by code dumps though, but there's been some.

But I can look into the updater issue. Would it also be beneficial if it had a button to write the desktop file and icon? Back in the early days, that's how I distributed this app: as three zip files for Linux, Windows and MacOS with tailored scripts for setting it up on each system.

[MrDaisyBates]

I'm def sympathetic, but I almost imagine they could just flag AI stuff as AI stuff and let the consumer decide if it's slop or not instead of a blanket ban, etc. Again though, def out of the scope. I'm sympathetic, don't get me wrong. I can't imagine how exhausted some of these open source coders are getting maintaining some of these programs for a decade or more, etc. It's a huge undertaking and commitment. AI is far from perfect, but it's probably one of the best things to happen for these people. The opportunity to troubleshoot and potentially deploy simple fixes, etc in minutes instead of coming home from their job each day, probably exhausted, and spending hours trying to figure it out, etc.

I'm not a developer, though, and it's not my thing to burden with. I just feel for them. A blanket ban punishes those people.

But anywho! Yes. Back on topic. Sorry.

I'm not so fussed about it, though. It is friction and it is feedback and it is your labor of love. I know many people simply download something, aren't happy with it, uninstall, and the developer never hears about it. Things can't be fixed if the developer isn't made aware.

For Tangent, I use the AppImage generally and it has that autoupdater built in, and I select which channel I want, and it updates inside the AppImage. I'm far from a programmer so, I have no clue what wizardry goes on behind the scenes. I know the Flatpak updates through the standard Flatpak channels (its updater is locked on "Stable" basically. People who want to be on the bleeding edge, etc use other packaging).

For me personally, again, just user feedback (do what you think is best), I def prefer my GUI and not needing to rely on terminal. I'm not scared of it, but I don't spend a lot of time there and I basically understand commands enough to basically know what they're doing, but not create them myself. I def don't like needing to use a script to do things if I can avoid it, but NGL, I quite frequently ask Claude to write scripts to tidy things, up, etc for me. I just had it write one to clone a dozen repos from one person on GitHub and it's also got a function to pull to refresh them later, etc.

So, yes, I personally don't prefer needing to build/compile on my own machine if I can avoid it. I'm sure there's many purists that feel very differently about it and they probably have very valid, justified reasons.

For me personally, I love what Tangent is doing, but it's far from "industry norm" or anything. You probably know that, though. It just works and I like it. The next best thing in my case is a self updating AppImage, and then just the normal Flatpak/etc through the software center.

In your case, though, your appimage did autoupdate (it just downgraded, lol). So. I can beyond work with that. I track your repo with an RSS feed, so I see when a release happens, and then I can go update my appimages (I use an application called Gear Lever which can check that for ones that are set up properly. Some aren't. Yours seems to be).

So, in that regard, I wonder if in your case it'd be worth having like a stable/beta or whatever AppImage pulling from different spots (again, no clue how that wizardry works). I just know when I downloaded your most current release, it downgraded to the build just before it when I hit "update."

I have a lot of tolerance for buggy applications that are being freshly developed. I tolerate it because I like helping you guys produce a good tool and I'm happy to kinda be on the frontline if it's a tool I'm inclined to use a lot (I have been waiting for that EPUB feature with your tool, as well as a dark theme...I haven't checked if that's there yet!) and that's how I ended up here. But I know that it's not right for everyone! But as of right now, everyone who would update their appimage automatically would end up with the same distribution basically.

Anywho. I don't want to take up more of your time than necessary here. I want you to also do what's best for you, and if this stuff isn't helpful, that's okay, too! Just one user's feedback among many and I hope it helps with some kind of design or decision making when it comes to your distribution stuff.

Thanks for what you do!

[vkbo]

Sure, all good. It's the zsync file in the release that makes the AppImage updatable, and I'll look into how to flag as stable or testing or whatever semantics they use.

I'll leave this issue open for the auto-updater. I'm sure it isn't that tricky.

[vkbo]

By the way, if you're running the 26.2 Beta 1 image on actual projects, be aware that there are stability issues with it. (It is a beta after all.) This is mainly because I'm introducing background threading for the spell checker, but also some other features that required a fair bit of tightening up in parts of the code that was not designed for that type of distributed work. I think most issues have been resolved now, so I'll make a Beta 2 release tomorrow.

[MrDaisyBates]

Thank you for the headsup and hard work! <3