feature request: Check for new versions during startup.

[Spork-Schivago]

Hello,

Is it possible for you (or some other programmer) to implement a feature that checks for new versions whenever PuTTYTray is ran? I was thinking maybe a checkbox in the About window that says something like Check for new versions during execution of PuTTYTray

It could be disabled by default for paranoid people who might be afraid of man-in-the-middle attacks but I think if done properly, it could be implemented in a secure way. The setting could be saved based on what's checked in the Session section. For example, if the user has Sessions from registry checked, the setting would be saved in the registry. If they have Sessions from file checked, the setting would be saved in the file.

If this feature is something that you feel would be a good feature that might be implemented, I had a few suggestions based on this. It could connect to the main server or a mirror, wherever PuTTYTray is normally downloaded from, and look for maybe a text file on the server called latest, latest.txt, lastest-version, whatever. This file would have the latest version and a download link to that latest version. PuTTYTray will download and read the file to see if the version inside is different than the current version. If it is, PuTTYTray could say there's a new version available and provide a download link. It could also offer to download the new version automatically. If the download automatically option is implemented, it should read the current working directory for PuTTYTray and the current filename of PuTTYTray. It should maybe terminate PuTTYTray somehow, but stay executed in memory. This I think might be very hard and a third-party program might be needed. I'm not sure how that would work. But it should download the program and replace the current version with the new version. On my system, I have PuTTYTray ran off a flash drive and I have it named putty.exe. I keep my sessions on the thumb drive and I keep my keys on the thumb drive. So, even if someone tried using our laptop to connect to my secure servers, without the thumb drive, they cannot get in because password authentication is disabled on my servers.

Thanks and keep up the great work!!!

[FauxFaux]

I'm not in favour of having this on by default. Could definitely be done as an opt-in, though.

[Spork-Schivago]

I agree 100% that it should not be enabled by default. I do not like programs that connect to web servers without my knowing, and I could see a lot of people not liking that. But for the people who would like to have PuTTYTray connect to the net on startup, and check to see if a newer version is available (perhaps a version.txt file somewhere that contains the latest version, and simply checking if that number stored in there is higher than the currently running version would suffice), I think would be desirable by enough people that it could be worth adding the extra code.

If you would like help with implementing it, I can try writing the code myself, with you adding a version file somewheres that my version of PuTTYTray could check against) and I'll give it a shot. Then you could approve or disapprove my patch file, or suggest changes. It's been a fairly long time since I've written any programs for Windows, although, I do code in C in Linux fairly often like.

Thank you!