[josm-dev] JOSM version detect

[Dirk Stöcker]

On Fri, 3 Apr 2009, Frederik Ramm wrote:

> We must expect many people to download a new JOSM version over the next
> few weeks because they know they'll need it to work with API 0.6. Any
> features we want to force onto users, now is the time ;-)

Serverstats currently indicate following:

Last stable    (1504) == 13%
Current stable (1515) == 21%
Last two latest       == 10%
Old versions          == 44%

This means more than half of the users use recent versions. And what I 
like too is that most users use the tested versions and no longer the 
latest.

And as I show stats here lets look at the languages as well:

52% use de
17% use en
  7% use en_GB
  7% use fr
  3% use ru

And only < 10% of JOSM users use still Java 1.5.

> BTW sometimes I think that we should have a mechanism that disables JOSM
> versions if they are too old. Something like a special MOTD code that,
> if a JOSM version older than X connects, sends back a message saying
> "please don't use this software any more". I would not use that feature
> in everyday operation but every now and then you discover a bug where
> you think: Hey, this is dangerous, people could break a lot of things
> through this bug.

I think it should already be possible to display a special message inside 
the StartUp page when old versions are used. Writing a Trac-Plugin to 
analyze the HTTP headers would be required for this.

Currently versions < 1510 do not get a StartUp page at all (or probably 
some sort of an error). I hope that helps to let them upgrade to a more 
recent version.

Ciao
-- 
http://www.dstoecker.eu/ (PGP key available)