Update notification for test builds

[Saga Musix]

Hello all,
as you might have already found out, the next version of OpenMPT can check for updates automatically again (and this time, without DLL trouble). Usually, this functionality only checks for stable releases, but for the brave testers among you, I have also enabled automatic update checks for the test builds now. You can find out how to activate them in the manual.
The version information is fetched once a day, so sometimes it might not report the most recent version, but that should still be frequent enough, I think.

[Harbinger]

Hmmm.... does this mean the INI setting for CheckforUpdates is obsolete?

[Saga Musix]

Hmmm.... does this mean the INI setting for CheckforUpdates is obsolete?

It has been obsolete for quite a while, yes. The new update checker also uses an own INI section to keep the file more tidy.

[Harbinger]

I'm a couple of days away from releasing OHM 1.19, and i need some more details on update checking. As i understand, winhttp.dll is no longer checked. What is done when MPT tries to update MPT? What does the INI section for this (in the 1.19 build of MPT) look like?

[Saga Musix]

What is done when MPT tries to update MPT? What does the INI section for this (in the 1.19 build of MPT) look like?

It looks like nothing because the update check does not exist in the official 1.19 release yet. It will come back with the next version. winhttp.dll has not been needed since 1.17.02.52 (when automatic checks were disabled).

In the next version, the INI section would look something like this...

Code Select Expand

[Update]
LastUpdateCheck=<date of last tried update>
UpdateCheckPeriod=<check period in days>
UpdateURL=<url to update server>
ShowUpdateHint=<has first automatic update been run and has an update hint been shown, do not edit>
SendGUID=<boolean value to enable or disable statistics>



Note to update check users: Starting from OpenMPT 1.19.01.05, the update URL has changed slightly, have a look at the first post to get the new URL. OpenMPT can now send an (anonymized) GUID together with each update check, which can help us in the future to collect very basic statistics (like f.e. how often is the program updated, or how many distinctive users are approximately using the update funcionatliy). No personal data can be collected through this, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't disable this option.

[Harbinger]

OK, then i'll wait for the next release to mention auto-updating and delete the INI reference from the OHM. Thanks Jojo....

The OHM will be ready by the end of this week....

[Saga Musix]

There is also a human-readable and parsable (via XML / XHTML) version of the update information available now:
For stable versions, there is http://update.openmpt.org/info and for testing versions http://update.openmpt.org/info/testing - Feel free to use this information for anything, be it generating a newsfeed, a custom desktop application or whatever.

[Rakib]

Perfect for twitter alerts.

[Saga Musix]

Starting from OpenMPT 1.19.01.05, the update URL has changed slightly

Now that OpenMPT 1.19.02.00 has been released, I just wanted to clarify that (if anyone was already using the test builds) you either have to use the URL that can be found in the first post or you have to click the "Reset" button in the update settings for the default stable URL; the old URL with the "%s" parameter cannot be parsed by OpenMPT 1.19.02.00 anymore.

[Really Weird Person]

I imagine that the update checker downloads the release version of the builds (as opposed to the debug version). This seems logical. I also noticed that the Channel Volume effect uses hexadecimal now rather than decimal and that a bug which caused it to not function properly has been fixed. I almost did a report, but didn't because I am using version 1.19.20 and I know that there are later versions available (such as the official release of 1.19.30, which is how I discovered the hexadecimal display of the Channel Volume effect and the fixing of the bug with that effect).

[Saga Musix]

I imagine that the update checker downloads the release version of the builds

I also noticed that the Channel Volume effect uses hexadecimal now rather than decimal

??

[herodotas]

I'm found new test versions on net, but OpenMPT no show its anymore?

[Saga Musix]

Seems that, by chance, the version info extraction script managed to not break until OpenMPT 1.23. Should be fixed in a bit.
Great that noone noticed that there haven't been any updates for a month at last.

[LPChip]

I got the update notification for 1.23.01.00 and for 1.23.02.00 so its not that "broken".

[Saga Musix]

That's because the official release channel is updated manually. Only the testing channel uses an automated script to retrieve the current OpenMPT test version.