The difference picking the right type can make! Last night, I realized that the where I had a distributionSha256sum :: String, I should instead use distributionKey :: Key. This means that when git-annex is eventually downloading an upgrade, it can treat it as just another Key being downloaded from the web. So the webapp will show that transfer along with all the rest, and I can leverage tons of code for a new purpose. For example, it can simply fsck the key once it's downloaded to verify its checksum.

Also, built a DistriutionUpdate program, which I'll run to generate the info files for a new version. And since I keep git-annex releases in a git-annex repo, this too leverages a lot of git-annex modules, and ended up being just 60 easy lines of code. The upgrade notification code is tested and working now.

And, I made the assistant detect when the git-annex program binary is replaced or modified. Used my existing DirWatcher code for that. The plan is to restart the assistant on upgrade, although I need to add some sanity checks (eg, reuse the lsof code) first. And yes, this will work even for apt-get upgrade!

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Today's work was sponsored by Paul Tötterman