Updating the bootstrapper/paket.targets

[dnauck]

Currently we don't have updates or update notifications for the bootstrapper.

We could either:

1. check for the latest release when running the bootstrapper and display a notification when a new release is available
2. check for the latest release when running the bootstrapper and auto-update its executable
   1. by Shadow Copying Assemblies
   2. move the locked bootstrapper.exe, download a new bootstrapper and cleanup on next run
3. let paket.exe handle the bootstrapper like a dependency and display it on paket outdated or update it on paket update, etc.

It should also update the paket.targets file when required.

Current disadvantages:

• bootstrapper is updated on every paket.exe release even if there was no changes

[matthid]

Seriously wondering why this wasn't suggested earlier.
I'm voting for option "3" which seems to be the easiest to implement.
IMHO we should not complicate the bootstrapper if we don't really need to. For example "1" could be integrated in the paket startup code instead or as suggested in 'paket outdated' (which I would prefer).

[Stift]

I have thought about it earlier and thought about paket.bootstrapper.exe --self
I came to that point when github had problems some time ago and we implemented an alternative nuget download. The only problem I had so far with that is that in the nuget package is no paket.bootstraper.

[Stift]

BTW you can copy it over the current bootstrapper.exe to self update

[forki]

so we need a Paket.Boostrapper package?

[dnauck]

@Stift what about the paket.targets file?

How do we know when to run the update command? every time? or is paket.exe outdated running this?

[Stift]

@forki in case we want a self update via nuget we could need one

[Stift]

@dnauck have not considered yet the paket.target file, but could be done easily. Do we consider the paket.target as unchangeable and overwrite it without asking? I'm just asking because users could change it and are not aware of a change.
My proposal is currently supporting ´paket.bootstrapper.exe --self´. I chose that because when we had outages of github it was difficult to even get paket.exe. Should we just show with ´paket outdated´ that the bootstrapper is outdated and show a suggestion.

[forki]

https://www.nuget.org/packages/Paket.BootStrapper/

[Stift]

Thank you @forki for the package I have included this now.

[Stift]

This issue is still open, because the request of @dnauck for updating the paket.targets file is still unresolved.
I had some time to think about this and thought about that we should maybe let the bootstrapper stick with downloading the latest paket.exe as functionality.
The paket.targets is originally downloaded by the paket.exe when you do paket.exe autorestore on. IMO we should bring the functionality somewhere near here.
My suggestion would be sth like paket autorestore update, to either only update the file or turn the feature off and on. Any other ideas?

[dnauck]

Currently the bootstrapper also updates itself via --self on every paket release. Also there is no warning if its outdated, etc.

[Stift]

That would be easily doable. We just display an info when updating that just checks the latest version an displays it.
There is only one problem, that for the github download we cannot detect whether there is a real change @sforki. So each paket release we see immediately an outdated message.

[forki]

Closing old issue.