The development team behind LibreOffice has announced the addition of a new automatic updater. The new development is specifically designed for Linux systems and is majorly based on the Mozilla updater code.
LibreOffice developers spent almost a year to shape the automatic updater feature. Notably, the feature was initially a part of macOS and Windows platforms and debuted on Linux several months after the original development. The Linux version is designed on the basis of delta updates for application updates.
Two-step process
LibreOffice developer Markus Mohrhard revealed that the latest update process involves two steps. The first step is primarily to reach the server to search for a suitable update package, while the second step includes the replacement of the existing LibreOffice instance. This two-step process helps users download the new updates in a short span of time.
“We currently use a two-step process to ensure that we are not blocking the user too long as downloading a complete update file can take several minutes (about 200MB compared to around 2MB for my current delta files) and ensuring that if one of the steps fails we still have a working build,” Mohrhard explains.
No support for local installations
The automatic updater will not work on local LibreOffice installations. Instead, the feature will be available only to the versions that are downloaded from the official LibreOffice website. You need to extract the downloaded archive and run the office suite using binaries in the extracted folder.
Most Linux-based distributions are designed in a way to disallow any third-party developer to access local files. You need to rely on the repository of your own distribution to update apps for now. Having said that, most of the popular repositories receive updates on a regular basis. You will, therefore, receive the latest LibreOffice version as soon as it’s out.
