Automatically find out the latest stable version

[pherjung]

As discussed on this PR, it should be better if Bugger! find automatically the latest stable version instead of changing at each release the variable latest.

[nephros]

Others have tried this, and failed, using various methods.

https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/7935

I agree that would be good , also for other applications to have an automatic and reliable way of doing that.

However, the only acceptable solution IMO is a common "Best Practice" one shared by e.g. sfos-upgrade, patchmanager and possibly others.

Therefore, I will not spend any time on it personally, but am open to any contributions that have these properties.

[nephros]

They way latest is used now, i.e. checking whether any cbeta functions should apply, manual updates to the file aren't too bad. There should be plenty of time between a release and the next cbeta phase.

I don't think many users will stay on cbeta after the release is out.

[Olf0]

Others have tried this, and failed, using various methods.
https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/7935

Well, this was about the "stop releases".

While Jolla does not provide any list of SailfishOS releases, Coderus does at https://coderus.openrepos.net/whitesoft/sailversion
Another, less reliable source is Wikipedia, which only provides the first three release numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS#Version_history

Mind that both sources do not cover cBeta and EA releases, only GA (general availability) releases.

[Olf0]

@pherjung, if you want to research a sustainable solution, please take a look at what Jolla's Settings → SailfishOS updates queries (i.e, requests) and receives by the help of tcpdump etc.: Such knowledge will likely allow for mimicking an arbitrary SailfishOS installation at version A.B.C.X asking for the next release to upgrade to. Though this always is the next stop release when querying for an older SailfishOS release, it will be the latest A.B.C.Y when querying for any point release of the recent A.B.C.?; thus if starting at an older release this might need a chain of query requests.

If you analyse the outgoing requests for a cBeta-enabled installation, an EA-enabled installation and a regular installation, one will be able to query any most recent release for all three release channels.