Use GitHub releases/API for updating about eve-iph

[Pilchard123]

I'm happy to take this on - indeed, I'd quite like to.

[Pilchard123]

There are a few things that need ironing out with this plan, but I thought I'd get it down on paper (well, kinda) and see what people thought. Below are some other things thought of.

• What happens if the application is closed during a download?
  • Save the file using a one name (e.g. Update.partial) during download, then when the download is finished, rename.
• What happens if the application is closed while applying the update?
  • I don't know. I doubt it would happen, but it might do.
  • Just trust that the user is not going to do that? It's not like it would be difficult to re-download it.
• How should the API be used?
  • octokit.net would work well
  • It's another dependency to keep around
  • It requires .NET 4.5
  • It wouldn't require maintenance.
  • Write API code independently?
  • No dependencies.
  • Why do that when there's already a library out there?
• With a slight change to the process above, it would be possible to allow people to opt in to receiving pre-release updates as well.
• The process above could mean that the separate update program would no longer be necessary. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not.
• It could well be written so that the download and part of the update could be done while the application is still beiong used
• The API could also be used for release notes, by putting them in the description of each release.
• The dependency on MediaFire would be removed
  • But it would be replaced by a dependency on GitHub
• IIRC, there's a dependency on something Zifrian hosts as well. Would this be relevant?
• The GitHub Releases API can be accessed without authenticating.
  • It is quite heavily rate-limited if the client does not authenticate.
  • Conditional requests could mitigate that; the request does not count against the limit if it does not return data.
• The command line parameters may not be needed if the folder locations are well-known or can be worked out.

[Cwittofur]

Thanks for providing this information! I was going to look at using GitHub for releases haha. I'm currently working on a different feature and I don't want to rush the updater code so I think that should be slated for the next release. If possible, I'd like to talk with you about this over TeamSpeak or something at some point!

[Pilchard123]

I don't know if TeamSpeak will work. It seems there's quite a time difference between us; I'm on GMT+1 and you seem to be active in the late-evening/night for me. Would IRC do the job? A channel on Freenode or similar might be useful for in the future as well.

[Zifrian]

I'm all for using github but I couldn't find any place where it looked like you could use it as a file server. I guess you can just put the files in the repository but not sure if that violates the TOS. Plus I'd have to do all that work you put up heh.

[Pilchard123]

I'll happily take on the update code. The binaries can be uploaded as release assets - that's what that section is for, after all.

[Zifrian]

BTW, there is no link to my computer or at least there shouldn't be. As long as the links are the same on the media fire server, it should work fine. Maybe the username/pass change did something on the server but I'm not sure. Anyway, doing whatever is needed to move off a paid server is fine by me.