On Week 23/2012
skyjake:
Last week I continued work on the automatic updates, managing to reach a point where the system was functional enough to be merged into the master branch. It still has a number of rough edges, though, like the need to switch to windowed mode when showing the notification dialogs. I plan to shift my focus to other things for a while and make some more improvements to the updater in the future. In the meantime, we can see how it starts working when new unstable builds become available -- you should get update notifications sooner or later.
At the moment there is only a console interface for manually controlling the updater. The "update" command will check for available updates, and "updatesettings" will show the settings dialog. There you can choose how often to check for updates and what kind of releases to follow (stable or unstable). There's also an "updateandnotify" command that checks for updates and always shows the notification dialog even if you are up to date.
If you're playing the game while downloading an update, please note that we aren't yet autosaving or even suggesting to manually save the game before starting installation of an update. When you click on the "Install" button, the engine will shut down and your current game will be lost.
There's one bonus feature for Mac users: I added a "Check For Updates" menu item in the Doomsday application menu. It is only accessible in windowed mode, though (reminder: F11 toggles fullscreen).
In the future, we'll have enough UI functionality in the engine itself to implement the update notifications and download using our own Doomsday widgets, meaning we won't have to fall back to windowed mode and use native dialog boxes.
The Builder now also generates signatures for each package, meaning you can verify that the packages are valid and have been generated by me. They are signed using my repository signing key. The plan is to incorporate a signature check into the automatic update installer at some point -- presently you'll have to verify the packages manually if this is something you are concerned about. (Ubuntu/Apt users: You can disregard this as apt already does this for you.)
This week I plan to address some smaller items on the roadmap (maybe JPEG support) and have a look at the 1.9.9 todo list in case there's some suitable small items to work on.
Last week I continued work on the automatic updates, managing to reach a point where the system was functional enough to be merged into the master branch. It still has a number of rough edges, though, like the need to switch to windowed mode when showing the notification dialogs. I plan to shift my focus to other things for a while and make some more improvements to the updater in the future. In the meantime, we can see how it starts working when new unstable builds become available -- you should get update notifications sooner or later.
At the moment there is only a console interface for manually controlling the updater. The "update" command will check for available updates, and "updatesettings" will show the settings dialog. There you can choose how often to check for updates and what kind of releases to follow (stable or unstable). There's also an "updateandnotify" command that checks for updates and always shows the notification dialog even if you are up to date.
If you're playing the game while downloading an update, please note that we aren't yet autosaving or even suggesting to manually save the game before starting installation of an update. When you click on the "Install" button, the engine will shut down and your current game will be lost.
There's one bonus feature for Mac users: I added a "Check For Updates" menu item in the Doomsday application menu. It is only accessible in windowed mode, though (reminder: F11 toggles fullscreen).
In the future, we'll have enough UI functionality in the engine itself to implement the update notifications and download using our own Doomsday widgets, meaning we won't have to fall back to windowed mode and use native dialog boxes.
The Builder now also generates signatures for each package, meaning you can verify that the packages are valid and have been generated by me. They are signed using my repository signing key. The plan is to incorporate a signature check into the automatic update installer at some point -- presently you'll have to verify the packages manually if this is something you are concerned about. (Ubuntu/Apt users: You can disregard this as apt already does this for you.)
This week I plan to address some smaller items on the roadmap (maybe JPEG support) and have a look at the 1.9.9 todo list in case there's some suitable small items to work on.