Work on the automatic updater for LibreOffice has progressed and daily builds with the updater are provided already for Windows and Linux. However, the updater will not be available in the 6.0 major release. We will explain how the updater works, which problems have been addressed already and what still needs to be done.
The LibreOffice automatic updater currently under development is based on the Mozilla mar updater code. The integration of the code was started as a GSoC project in 2015 and has seen more work since the end of 2016. Since mid of 2017 daily builds are available that contact the new LibreOffice update server and provide automatic updates. The distributed updates include full updates as well as differential updates depending on the age of the builds.
During the talk we will start by discussing the updater server infrastructure and show how the new code allows to collect a number of metrics that help the whole project. Next, the client side with the integration of the mozilla based mar code will be discussed. This includes the already existing features and an explanation how existing updater builds are already generated. Finally, the challenges that are still ahead will be shortly outlined, including a short demo showing the new MSI update file generation code.
Speakers: Markus Mohrhard