Could the CLI check for the latest stable version?

Question

Given the number of people (mostly beginners) who seem to run into problems with the CLI because they have an older version and are following either newer instructions or trying to use libraries that rely on newer features, I wonder whether it would be worth adding a check to the script that would output a warning if the current stable version is more recent (from the download site)?

I know that won't help people who already have an old version installed but it would at least help future people...

...or is the command-line "API" stable enough at this point that it wouldn't be worth it?

Examples include the changing semantics for both -M and -T over the years, support for :git/sha (vs :sha), and several other changes, both in tools.deps itself and the CLI script.

Comments

I'd be in favor of this, I have lost a small amount of time to this moving to a less-frequently used machine that didn't have all the flags.

Answer 1

Created ticket at https://clojure.atlassian.net/browse/TCLI-103

Comments

Can we have this option as an explicit argument (e.g. --check-latest-version or similar), rather than something executed automatically? I never liked how npm does this automatically, not to say that it will slow down things due to network round-trip.

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An explicit argument would mean no one actually uses it (you could explicitly check now if you want). I think there are a variety of options though (check once a day / once a week / only when an error occurs /etc). And this could potentially be configurable. When I get around to looking at it, will think about all those things.