imacat wrote:
I wonder if it is possible to generate the extension update information files <extension>.update.xml automatically on http://extensions.openoffice.org, instead of maintaining the update information files by the authors manually?
This requires a slightly complex answer since there are differences between theory and practice.
In theory, when you upload an extension to extensions.openoffice.org, you needn't provide an update XML file: the repository knows about the mechanism and automatically generates it. Moreover, OpenOffice knows where to ask for the update so, if you use the official repository to host your extension, updates will magically work with no need of actions from the developer (not even specify an update URL), aside possibly from making sure that the version number always increases.
In practice, the process is broken. The point where it breaks is the fact that extensions.openoffice.org does not provide the real update information but it sends a hardcoded answer instead, saying that no updates are available. This was done back in the Oracle times for some reasons - probably traffic, but I have no clue here, maybe it was just broken.
Fact is, what you ask for is already available in theory and I have seen it working for a period before it was disabled in 2010. But it isn't available in practice at the moment, and it hasn't been for years.
On the application side (the OpenOffice program) everything should still be working, even though I've recently seen an issue where Ariel explained we might have some regressions on the OpenOffice side too:
https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=121201 Regards, Andrea.
