I like being able to upgrade my rebol executable.
now I want my apps to upgrade themselves.
- do I extend 'upgrade to take a refinement?
- do I put something in the header, establish another convention
and make up an upgrade-app.r look in the header for and do
upgrades_at: http://public_site/releases.html
here is what "limits" me:
rule #1) I want my app to be upgradeable by non-programmers.
prompts that take english [not netspeak] are preferred
over command line args but it is reasonable to expect
somebody will want to say:
"I am uncertain... upgrade everything in sight!"
and call 'upgrade-app'.r with a wildcard or multiple files
at the first prompt.
rule #2) some of my apps are not interactive. Upgrading them
has to be easy via the command line.
rule #3) some customers (the kind that run powerplants and
are by-nature somewhat skiddish) will not open themselves up
to an app that goes out "over the net". These folk are ok
with a CDrom release containing multiple images for upgrade.
Not all of the app is in rebol. There are some platform
specific executables and datafiles. However, the rebol
version number and platform seem to be quite predictable.
What would be a way of structuring the CDrom to make
platform-specific overrides possible?
rule #4) sometimes a password or customer-id may be needed to get to
the newer version of the code. It is ok to prompt for this but
only if there is an 'unauthorized' error from the web server.
We don't want to make it difficult to get to the loss-leaders
and core-givaways.
Now I know all you free-thinkers sniffing these threads
are not as limited as I am. Take this as a challenge:
what is the contents of upgrade-app.r ?
Consider that, for examples, all the scripts
in the rebol.org library are candidates
for 'public_site' (maybe down a bit deeper in next rev).
Do not limit yourself to rebol.org though
since rapid adoption of rebol by
corporate types hinges on _you_ making it
easy for them to release better versions
of applications and scripts without hassle.
good luck.
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