Installation: keeping the program up to date

Unpacking the archive and registering the program is described in the README. This chapter covers what comes after: how a new version reaches you.

The notice

A release build looks for a newer version at most once a day. It does so after info and when you start the editor, waits at most three seconds and prints one line on stderr:

freemapper-courseplan 0.15.0 is available (you have 0.14.0). Update with: freemapper-courseplan update

The editor shows the same news in its status bar. The commands that work only on your files (init, check, export and the others) do not check, so a script never waits for the network. A slow or failed check stays silent and is tried again the next day. No check runs when the variable CI is set. A build you made yourself from source never checks and never updates itself; update then tells you to use git pull and cargo build --release --locked.

Updating

freemapper-courseplan update

shows the newest version with its release notes and download size and asks before it installs. --yes skips the question (needed when no terminal is attached), --check only looks and ends with exit code 10 when a newer version exists, and --version 0.14.0 installs a given version, an older one too.

The program checks the signature of the release against a key built into it, then the checksums of the download and of the unpacked file. It starts the new file with --version before it swaps anything in. Nothing is installed when one of these checks fails. The new version takes the place of the old one under the same path, so the registration with your AI assistant stays valid. A running MCP server keeps the old version until the assistant restarts it.

The program folder must be writable for you. The program never asks for administrator rights. If it cannot write there, it says which folder and installs nothing; unpack the new archive by hand in that case.

Going back

freemapper-courseplan update --rollback

swaps the version before the last update back in. The old file stays next to the program as freemapper-courseplan.previous (on Windows freemapper-courseplan.previous.exe) until the next update replaces it.

What the daily check does

update --mode notify (the default) only tells you. --mode install installs a newer version by itself after a command that worked, and tells you. --mode off stops the daily check. The setting is stored in settings.toml in the folder freemapper-courseplan of your system's configuration folder (on macOS ~/Library/Application Support/freemapper-courseplan). The variable FREEMAPPER_COURSEPLAN_UPDATE overrides it for one run. The MCP server never installs on its own, whatever the mode: it tells the assistant, and the assistant asks you before it calls install_update.

What is sent

The program asks github.com and release-assets.githubusercontent.com for one small file (the update manifest and its signature) and, when you install, for the program file. It sends a fixed User-Agent with the name, version and repository of the program, for example freemapper-courseplan/0.15.0 (+https://github.com/HenryJobst/freemapper-courseplan). It sends no project data, no names and no identifier. Other hosts are refused, also when a server redirects there.

A release that cannot install itself

A release can raise the oldest version that may install it. Then update --check still exits with 10 and names the release page; unpack that archive by hand once. The same holds for the first release with the updater: versions before it have no update command.