[Tilesathome] Better update mechanism

[Patrick Kilian]

Hi,

>> What is much more likely is that users are tampering with either 
>> version.txt or some source files.
> Is there some kind of moral obligation to use the newest client code
>  and to not "tamper" with the code?
In some way, yes. If you want to contribute you should run the newest
code. Otherwise you are producing broken tiles. And it's very annoying
for the developers to be bugged about broken tiles where the underlying
bug was fixed a week ago.
And if you want to "tamper" with the code please check that you're
uploads are ok.


> Why not DRM it outright and distribute only compiled binaries if 
> that's what you want ;-)
Is there a module on cpan to do that? *g*


> Honestly, whenever I run the client nowadays, which doesn't happen 
> often and mostly only for debugging, all that 
> auto-version-check-self-update thing is the first bit I disable.
If you are working on the code, that makes sense. And you can do so on
the command line.


> I  simply don't want software that updates itself from an SVN which 
> can be accessed by virtually anybody.
Perhaps the software should not update itself,  but stop and print a
message when a newer version is found.


> If I were not as lazy as I am, I would also make sure that the 
> sofware is installed by another user account than the one used to run
>  it; that's just standard security practice.
That should probably be added to the wiki...


> I find the version checks and self-updates rather intrusive.
I beg to differ between version checks and self-updates. The first are
really necessary. The second I'm not so sure about.


> Of course we don't want people running old software and ruining our 
> efforts, but I had thought that the simple version check on upload 
> was sufficient - along, perhaps, with an *optional* auto-update for 
> those who have the thing running in a sandbox. But you're talking as
>  if allowing the software to update itself would be some sort of
> basic requirement for the client software...
It's not. But making sure that tiles from known broken clients are not
uploaded is.


Matthias Julius wrote:
> Maybe it would be enough if the client only auto-updates the 
> osmarender styles.  And the server could refuse assigning jobs to and
> accept uploads from client versions that are known buggy.
That might be a good compromise if more people dislike the autoupdate.


Patrick "Petschge" Kilian