Disable GUI notification for newer version

[tarkah]

I'm packaging Mullvad for Solus OS and it'd be nice to disable the version check and GUI notification. Package updates are shipped to users every Friday, so the notice is really unnecessary, especially because they can't just "update" via a .deb or .rpm.

I've added a feature flag on the daemon, disable-version-check, which just replaces the app version request with an "empty" response that won't show as an update.

This seemed like the best place to disable this, as the VersionUpdater is pretty well tied into the daemon.

I've tested by patching this against 2021.3 and successfully did not see any version update notification. The output of mullvad version is:

Current version: 2021.3
	Is supported: false
	No newer version is available

Git checklist:

• Describe the change in CHANGELOG.md under the [Unreleased] header.
• Check that commits follow the Mullvad coding guidelines

---

This change is 

[tarkah]

I just noticed the IS_DEV_BUILD flag that "disables" the updater, so I changed this to use that same code path

[faern]

Am I understanding you correctly that the annoying part with the current app is that users get update notifications in the GUI?

If so. I think this better be solved in the GUI only. Change the GUI so it ignores version update broadcasts in one way or another. Also, make it configurable at runtime rather than build time. Then you can easily set an environment variable in your GUI launch .desktop file or similar instead of having to touch the daemon code.

[tarkah]

Yup, the ultimate goal is to not have a notification in the GUI. I believe the only place it shows via CLI is on version, which isn't a concern.

From a packaging perspective, the build option works great, is simple, and eliminates any network requests that won't be needed at runtime.

However, I agree a runtime option for disabling in GUI is probably the right way to think about this, especially as it enables anybody to easily disable the version check. I'll dig into the GUI code and take a second shot at this. Appreciate the feedback!

[tarkah]

It appears this would be the correct place to return early, to avoid setting the upgrade version and notifying.

mullvadvpn-app/gui/src/main/index.ts

Lines 931 to 966 in ef7c3ca

	private setLatestVersion(latestVersionInfo: IAppVersionInfo) {
	const suggestedIsBeta =
	latestVersionInfo.suggestedUpgrade !== undefined &&
	IS_BETA.test(latestVersionInfo.suggestedUpgrade);
	const upgradeVersion = {
	...latestVersionInfo,
	suggestedIsBeta,
	};
	this.upgradeVersion = upgradeVersion;
	// notify user to update the app if it became unsupported
	const notificationProviders = [
	new UnsupportedVersionNotificationProvider({
	supported: latestVersionInfo.supported,
	consistent: this.currentVersion.isConsistent,
	suggestedUpgrade: latestVersionInfo.suggestedUpgrade,
	suggestedIsBeta,
	}),
	new UpdateAvailableNotificationProvider({
	suggestedUpgrade: latestVersionInfo.suggestedUpgrade,
	suggestedIsBeta,
	}),
	];
	const notificationProvider = notificationProviders.find((notificationProvider) =>
	notificationProvider.mayDisplay(),
	);
	if (notificationProvider) {
	this.notificationController.notify(notificationProvider.getSystemNotification());
	}
	if (this.windowController) {
	IpcMainEventChannel.upgradeVersion.notify(this.windowController.webContents, upgradeVersion);
	}
	}

This is called when the daemon is first connected and on daemon subscription:

mullvadvpn-app/gui/src/main/index.ts

Lines 590 to 591 in ef7c3ca

	// fetch the latest version info in background
	void this.fetchLatestVersion();

mullvadvpn-app/gui/src/main/index.ts

Lines 659 to 676 in ef7c3ca

	private subscribeEvents(): SubscriptionListener<DaemonEvent> {
	const daemonEventListener = new SubscriptionListener(
	(daemonEvent: DaemonEvent) => {
	if ('tunnelState' in daemonEvent) {
	this.setTunnelState(daemonEvent.tunnelState);
	} else if ('settings' in daemonEvent) {
	this.setSettings(daemonEvent.settings);
	} else if ('relayList' in daemonEvent) {
	this.setRelays(
	daemonEvent.relayList,
	this.settings.relaySettings,
	this.settings.bridgeState,
	);
	} else if ('wireguardKey' in daemonEvent) {
	this.handleWireguardKeygenEvent(daemonEvent.wireguardKey);
	} else if ('appVersionInfo' in daemonEvent) {
	this.setLatestVersion(daemonEvent.appVersionInfo);
	}

[tarkah]

I've updated this to the proposed GUI change using DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK=1 env var.

I've backported this to 2021.3 and tested, it works as expected.

• Running without the variable shows the notification:

/usr/share/mullvad/mullvad-vpn

• Running with the variable doesn't show the notification:

DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK=1 /usr/share/mullvad/mullvad-vpn

• .desktop entry can be updated with the env var:

/usr/bin/env DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK=1 /usr/share/mullvad/mullvad-vpn %U

• CLI still reports the new version:

❯ mullvad version
Current version: 2021.3
        Is supported: true
        Suggested update: 2021.4
        Latest stable version: 2021.4

[raksooo]

Code looks good 👍

Could you add this environment variable to the readme? It would fit well under this heading: https://github.com/mullvad/mullvadvpn-app#supported-environment-variables

[faern]

Can we please prefix the env variable name with MULLVAD_? All our other env vars start with MULLVAD_ or TALPID_ depending on which component they belong to. I don't want to risk overlapping with other env vars spuriously defined on the system the user is running on.

[tarkah]

Can we please prefix the env variable name with MULLVAD_? All our other env vars start with MULLVAD_ or TALPID_ depending on which component they belong to. I don't want to risk overlapping with other env vars spuriously defined on the system the user is running on.

Good recommendation, we definitely don't want to risk any overlaps.

I've renamed the variable to MULLVAD_DISABLE_UPDATE_NOTIFICATION as per @raksooo recommendation. Changelog and Readme have both been updated.

[raksooo]

Great! Thanks for the contribution! 😄