Notifying users of available add-on updates

[seanbudd]

Link to issue number:

Closes #15035

Summary of the issue:

Users would like a push notification on NVDA start-up letting them know if add-ons have available updates

Description of user facing changes

When starting NVDA, a dialog will appear notifying users of updatable add-ons if there are available updates.
This will only notify users if the available update is in the same channel as the installed add-on.
There is an "update all" button on the dialog and a list of add-ons with updates available.
There is also an "Open Add-on Store" button to open the add-on store to the updatable add-ons tab.

A setting to disable this. This is a combobox so that in future users can decide between:

• notify on updates (default)
• automatic update (See Ability to automatically update add-ons #3208)
• disabled

Description of development approach

Created a scheduling module to schedule tasks on NVDA start up, using the schedule pip module.
This is so we can have conflict free scheduling. e.g. so NVDA's update notification won't clash with the add-on update notification.
Uses their suggested code to run a background thread for task scheduling: https://schedule.readthedocs.io/en/stable/background-execution.html

Changed much of the Add-on Store downloading code to be classmethods. This allows us to use it from the message dialog without creating a store instance.

Testing strategy:

Manual testing
See the manual test plan for the add-on store.

Unit testing
Unit testing to smoke test handling the daily job at startup

Known issues with pull request:

None

Code Review Checklist:

• Documentation:
  • Change log entry
  • User Documentation
  • Developer / Technical Documentation
  • Context sensitive help for GUI changes
• Testing:
  • Unit tests
  • System (end to end) tests
  • Manual testing
• UX of all users considered:
  • Speech
  • Braille
  • Low Vision
  • Different web browsers
  • Localization in other languages / culture than English
• API is compatible with existing add-ons.
• Security precautions taken.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• New Features

  • Introduced automatic update notifications for add-ons.
  • Added a daily job to check for updatable add-ons.

• Enhancements

  • Updated Add-on Store to support updating multiple add-ons at once.
  • Improved Add-on Store dialog to open to a specific tab based on installed add-ons.

• Documentation

  • Updated manual with instructions for simulating add-on updates and testing automatic update notifications.

• Tests

  • Added unit tests for scheduling daily jobs and handling job clashes.

[Adriani90]

Really cool to see NV Access starting work on this. Thanks Sean for this great contribution.

[CyrilleB79]

The feature is nice and I think that this can ship as is to be tested in alpha to get first public feedback.

Though, I can see these little points that may be fixed/updated:

1. In the "Add-on updates available", there is a "State" column. But the state seems to be always "Update available". Or is there another possibility? If not, I'd remove this unuseful column.
2. The Add-on Store settings panel indicates the profile name but I think that the notification parameter is only saved in the base config. So the title should not change (as per general settings)
3. I have only two items in the "Update notifications" combo-box: "Notify (default)" and "Disabled". I would also expect "Notify" as done with with feature flags. Either you use a feature flag and use 3 values (Default (Notify), Notify and Disabled), or you just use a standard combo-box without indicating what the default is.

[seanbudd]

@CyrilleB79 thanks for looking into this:

1. The state updates as add-ons are downloaded and installed, like within the add-on store
2. I think I've fixed up profile announcements, please confirm
3. We are using a combox box in this situation as a third state will be added in future, please see the PR description. I can remove the "default" part of the label

[Qchristensen]

Looks good from docs point of view. Great work!

[seanbudd]

@coderabbitai review

[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 7

[CyrilleB79]

@seanbudd:

1. The state updates as add-ons are downloaded and installed, like within the add-on store

OK. Makes sense, especially when the download time is long.

2. I think I've fixed up profile announcements, please confirm

Confirmed. Thanks!

3. We are using a combox box in this situation as a third state will be added in future, please see the PR description. I can remove the "default" part of the label

Yes, it should be removed. But it is actually already.

@nvdaes, I agree to add in the settings panel (at the end) the checkbox corresponding to the "Don't show me again" checkbox of the add-on store. Though, it is not mandatory to discuss and add it in the same PR.

[seanbudd]

Can we please keep conversation on topic for this PR, and create new issues for these. It's adding a lot of noise to the discussion here.

[nvdaes]

I've seen the code for commits made today and also I've tested the Powershell scripts. For me it works as expected.