Display the number of active installations for each extension

[miguelsousa]

Since Mechanic has a server that is pinged to check for updates, I imagine that there's a way to track how many copies of a given extension are collectively installed. As a developer, I'd be interested to have an idea of the size of my audience. And as a RoboFont user, I'd be interested to know which extensions are most popular, because I may missing out on some cool stuff (and the list of extensions available is pretty long already).

With that said, I suggest that an "Active Installs" column be added to the list in the Install pane.

[jackjennings]

It's actually on my wish-list as well, but I'm glad to know that this is something that other people want as well.

There's some structural changes that need to happen in the way that the Mechanic system is set up to make this work, so it's not going to happen right away, unfortunately. Currently the Mechanic server software is only responsible for knowing that an extension exists, and doesn't know what the current version is. The Mechanic extension itself is what interfaces with GitHub to check the version (and also to install the first time), so knowing if an extension is installed or updated can't be recorded on the server. The plan is to shift some of the responsibility to the Mechanic server software, which will make this possible (among other things).

I'll be talking about this at RoboThon, and then I'll post on the blog about some of the upcoming changes and a roadmap for when this feature might be shipping.

[miguelsousa]

Nice. Thanks for the explanation and for sharing your plans.