Calculating the current download and current version?

[tjluoma]

Does cask have (or want, or plan to add) some way to automatically calculate the current download URL and current version?

I've been working on figuring this out for a number of apps that I use which don't use 'static' download URLs. Ideally an app will have a Sparkle RSS feed which can be easily parsed for the current information.

For example, the latest download URL for VLC.app can be found here:

curl -sL 'http://update.videolan.org/vlc/sparkle/vlc.xml' |\
awk -F'"' '/http:\/\/.*\.dmg/{print $2}' |\
tail -1

And the latest version

curl -sL 'http://update.videolan.org/vlc/sparkle/vlc.xml' |\
awk -F'"' '/sparkle:version/{print $2}' |\
tail -1

There's even a checksum, although it isn't SHA1

It seems to be that if cask could fetch the download URLs and version information 'dynamically' (I don't know what else to call it) then it would require less 'maintenance' of the various cask files for specific apps, especially apps which are frequently updated.

[phinze]

Great minds think alike! 😉 We've already been talking about this on over to #260 and your thoughts or PRs are very welcome!

Closing this one so we can keep the conversation going on #260.