Change names of binaries under GitHub releases page?

Development
1

When writing the docs with Sphinx/MyST/Sphinx-Design there are cases where myst_substitutions don’t work at all, it seems in directives for example. This makes it hard to create buttons that automatically point to the latest release binaries.

A feature that GitHub actually provides that I often see used by projects is a URL for the latest release:
https://github.com/OpenChemistry/avogadrolibs/releases/latest
and it is also possible to link to specific assets in this way using e.g.
https://github.com/OpenChemistry/avogadrolibs/releases/latest/download/Avogadro2-x86_64.AppImage.

Using this feature would mean that a dynamic URL wouldn’t even be necessary as the GitHub redirection would handle everything – but for the fact that the Mac and Windows binaries include the version number in their file names, which still needs to be updated on every release e.g. it’s
https://github.com/OpenChemistry/avogadrolibs/releases/latest/download/Avogadro2-1.99.0-Darwin.dmg
and not
https://github.com/OpenChemistry/avogadrolibs/releases/latest/download/Avogadro2-Darwin.dmg

Would you please consider enabling this by changing the GitHub Actions so that the version number is not included in the filenames? It’s already not the case for the Linux AppImage.

Ideally we’d also change the filenames in the 1.99.0 release too to allow the changes in the docs to be implemented already (which is very straightforward to do manually if you have the editing rights for the repo).

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The standard for AppImage seems to be to avoid the version number. :man_shrugging: I actually like having the version number in the app because I keep several versions obviously.

On Mac and Windows, having the version number in the download is customary (much like having the date in the nightly builds). So I’d very much like to keep that.

Yes, I know what you mean about the substitutions. It took a while to figure out a protocol, but the page works now. I think the “better” solution is actually to adapt something like Blender: Download — blender.org

They have some platform-detecting JavaScript and it adjusts the “download” button accordingly. (This would also make it easier to add ARM binaries.)

@Aditya_Omar implemented this: GitHub - adityaomar3/webOsdet - I just haven’t gone back to integrate it into the website.

The advantage would be that URL substitutions would happen in a bit of JavaScript, not anything to do with MyST or Sphinx.

3

Fair enough!

Yeah I know you were thinking of something like that for the home page, but didn’t realize that was with the install page in mind as well. That would be very cool. In that case I think two of those drop-down menus would be good, one for stable and one for nightly, to keep them neatly and clearly separated.