Arch Linux

snack

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2009-01-13

Posts: 893

Can't start Discord due to major udate available

This morning I started discord and it reported that the new 0.0.15 version was available. The old 0.0.14 client refused to start, it just gave the options to download the 0.0.15 source or .deb, or to shut down. [community] is still stuck at 0.0.14 so I had to download and hack the PKGBUILD to update to 0.0.15 and be able to run the client.

I understand that packagers are volunteers, and in the end the manual update was easy (as it should be for an Arch user), but nevertheless I feel uncomfortable with a package that suddenly stops to work due to an upstream update and leaves you in the dust until the packager finds the time to update it. I would expect such troubles from an AUR package but not from a [community] one. So what do you think about this? Is there a way to improve the situation (e.g. hack/patch out Discord package to make it work event when outdated, or have more co-packagers so that updated packages are more promptly rolled out), or is it appropriate to move to AUR?

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,321

Re: Can't start Discord due to major udate available

The problem here is that discord does blocking of old versions and release at the same time. There is just no way for the maintainers to keep up. You'd need people to be ready to update it 24/7...

Since discord is closed source, the arch maintainers are not allowed to patch it. You could patch it on your own to lie about the installed version (/usr/share/discord/resources/build_info.json)

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/co … -available

Last edited by progandy (2021-05-25 07:50:46)

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snack

Member

From: Italy

Registered: 2009-01-13

Posts: 893

Re: Can't start Discord due to major udate available

Yes, I somewhat figured out that the situation was like this. I just wanted to discuss it briefly to understand if I was missing something or if there was something that could be done to mitigate the disruption.

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,321

Re: Can't start Discord due to major udate available

You can get the version automatically with this line, but I believe automatic unattended package updates without human eyeballs are not really desired for the arch repositories.

curl -I "https://discord.com/api/download?platform=linux&format=tar.gz" | sed -n 's#^location: .*/discord-\([0-9.]*\).tar.gz.*#\1#p'

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| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' | alias ENGLISH='LANG=C.UTF-8 ' |