Notify users about available updates for their client?

[jdrch]

Just wondering the above. GitHub's Watch Releases feature doesn't work because the project has no releases in the GitHub sense. The official OpenVPN download pages RSS feed links to comments only and not the actual releases. This renders staying fully patched extremely difficult. Any ideas?

[cron2]

openvpn-gui does not really do "releases" - the releases are done over there, in the "openvpn" project. So moving the issue over... (@flichtenheld might opt to move to "openvpn-build" instead).

[jdrch]

@cron2 Thanks for the info. Neither openvpn-gui, openvpn, nor openvpn-build have releases in the GitHub sense. I'm not saying they have to, I'm just trying to figure out a good way to be informed of updates so I can install them. Whether that's via GitHub notifications or some other means is fine with me.

[cron2]

Hi,

On Wed, Dec 28, 2022 at 10:56:58AM -0800, jdrch wrote:

@cron2 Thanks for the info. Neither openvpn-gui, openvpn, nor openvpn-build have releases in the GitHub sense.

Yes, I understand what you're saying. Nevertheless, openvpn is the thing that does have actual releases, though not in the GitHub sense - so if we want to find a way to produce notifications when doing openvpn releases, this (or -build) is a better place than openvpn-gui.

GUI "releases" are always prompted by OpenVPN releases, and never released (or built) "standalone".

gert

-- "If was one thing all people took for granted, was conviction that if you feed honest figures into a computer, honest figures come out. Never doubted it myself till I met a computer with a sense of humor." Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Gert Doering - Munich, Germany @.***

[jdrch]

@cron2 Ah, I understand now. Thanks!

[selvanair]

Having an RSS feed using some existing "standards" like sparkle (winsparkle for Windows) may also help if we want to add an update feature to the GUI. https://github.com/vslavik/winsparkle/wiki/Appcast-Feeds

Use of Winsparkle would be an easy way to add a "check for updates and optionally install" to the GUI: https://winsparkle.org/ and https://github.com/vslavik/winsparkle though it adds dependency on wxWidgets and expat.

[TinCanTech]

Official release notifications are primarily sent to the OpenVPN announcement mailing list: [email protected]

[jdrch]

Subscribed, thanks!

[cron2]

Reopening this - this winsparkle idea to trigger "hey, do you want to upgrade?" sounds interesting. I see this in my user base, they never upgrade, because they are not told to (and I opened a Trac ticket for this 100 years ago, which never got traction).

[jdrch]

Reopening this - this winsparkle idea to trigger "hey, do you want to upgrade?" sounds interesting. I see this in my user base, they never upgrade, because they are not told to (and I opened a Trac ticket for this 100 years ago, which never got traction).

OK good. I closed it only because I didn't want to bother the dev team.

[flichtenheld]

Renamed this issue to better reflect what this is about at this point.