Notify users about available corrective/LTS patch releases
Blender should optionally notify users when a newer patch release of the currently installed version is available!
Example:
-
Installed:
5.2.0 -
Available:
5.2.1 - Blender shows a small notification on startup
- No automatic installation
-
No notification for major/minor upgrades such as
5.2 → 5.3
This should be especially useful for LTS and corrective releases, where updates mainly contain bug and crash fixes and are normally low-risk.
Why
Users currently have no indication that an important corrective release exists unless they manually check the website or encounter a problem first.
In my case, Blender 5.2.0 crashed while editing a video. Only while investigating the crash did I notice that 5.2.1 had already been released.
There was already an earlier discussion about checking for Blender updates. I understand the objections against automatic updates, especially in production environments.
What I do not understand is why at least a simple notification-only check for patch releases was not implemented!
This would avoid the risks of automatic updating while still informing users about important bugfix releases.
3 Comments
Update Notifier #149136
Thanks, I wasn't aware of #149136. That proposal appears to cover this and goes further than my minimal patch-release notification idea. Since Right-Click Select cannot mark issues from the official tracker as duplicates, I'll leave this here for reference.
RCS and Gitea aren't related that way. A post on one platform isn't a duplicate in the other. And no activity on RCS should influence the Gitea: RCS is meant for the community to discuss feature proposals, and Gitea is for developers to work on Blender.
Post on RCS should be marked as
In Development(ideally with a gitea link) if development is being done to bring a given feature in Blender. And once landed in an actual release of Blender, it should be marked asDone. And possibly archived to yield visibility to other posts (though only devs can do that).