Make updating easier for end-users

[november]

To my knowledge, and as a (forced-to) windows-user, updating Pidgin goes like this:

1.Pidgin springs a message at me that there's a new version. 2.I come to your site via browser of choice. 3.I download the new version. 4.I start the installation. 4a.I tell it yet again what I have told it every version since Pidgin had that name. 5.I can finally set off to blabber to my buddies with the new version, about 10 minutes after I wanted to.

This is... quite something to do, just for updating. And the package comes not all that slim with about 11 mb.

Compare with Firefox:

1.FF springs a message at me that there's a new version. 2.I agree to download & update. 3.I restart FF and continue surfing after a mere 3 minutes interruption.

There. That would be easier. And AFAIK safe a bulky download in favour of something rather slim. And would be much friendlier on end-users. And make it easier to stay at cutting-edge height of Pidgin-fashion.

[rekkanoryo]

As we have discussed on numerous occasions, we do not have the resources to implement such an autoupdate solution, nor is updating on Windows that difficult that it's worth complaining about.

For the record, my opinion is that we have enough Windows-specific stuff in Pidgin as it is; implementing autoupdate just for Windows users is not worth the effort it would require or the resources it demands.

[deryni]

While I agree completely that working on an auto-updater is not something we want to be doing it might be useful to have the release notification dialog include direct links to the correct installer (when available) and the changelog(s). We could probably also do a better job of publicizing the "silent install" flags and/or make an option to silently install in the future part of the installer (with a flag to over-ride that).

[intersol]

I wonder why this bug was closed as wontfix without any reason. If nobody has time to solve this - it should stay open maybe as a feature request.

Not having a silent/background updater is quite a big issue and I even wrote about here

[deryni]

The reasons it was closed are in the comment which closed it, my comments on top of that are in my comment after that.

Personally, I believe silent unnotified updating is evil as it causes random things to break for no apparent reason. As I said, I fully support the release notification plugin being modified to include links to the download locations to make fetching the new installer more easily. Beyond that I don't really think is necessary. Our Windows installer supports (to the best of my knowledge) silent unattended installations and as such can be put into an automated update process when needed.