Short

Since a version 20.112 VCStudio has a semi-automatic update system. It's not the same as being updated automatically tho. You still have controll over whether to update. And you can read about the updates from files like this. See Detailed in the bottom for more exaplanation of how it works.

Tutorial

This is a little tutorial about how to use the new Updater.

Basically when a new update is available. In the bottom / left corner. Above the update icon. You will see the number of versions that are available for the installation.

Clicking on which will give a window with a list of version. You can expend the list to see all changed files during one or another version. By clicking on version you will be transferred to wiki pages like this one. By clicking on the files you will be transferred to github history of that particular file.

In the bottom of the window there is an OKAY icon. Clicking which will start the updater.

And from that. VCStudio will download and replace the files automatically. Please do not close the software while the update is happening. So not to corrupt a given file.

Detailed

Since introducing an automatic update is a universal back-door this practice should be controlled by the user. So this is why it's not applying updates automatically even tho I could definatly make it do so.

The automatic part. That is questionable still, but less then applying for the updates. Is at a sturtup of the VCStudio it will send 1 request over to this repository. Downloading this file. You can change the file it will ask for in the project_manager/update_request.py. The filepath value.

From there it will get the complete version history. And compare it with the same file that's sitting locally on the system. If so happened that the version number is greater in the file retrieved from this repository then the file found locally. It will let the user know about an available update. This part we talked about in the tutorial above.

If you don't trust us. Which is a wise decision. You should trust no-one. Especially people that include a swearing language pack as a standard for their sofware. You can click on a version read about them. For those not convinced. You can open the version using the little triangle and click on the individual files. To see the whole history of the file.

Note : This Repository started out on GitHub. And so few early versions have their file histories over on GitHub. For those of you who want to go there and read about them. Here is the link.

When you click apply in the bottom, right corner. It will launch the updater it self. Updater will take the list of files from the update.data file it retrieved earlier. And one by one download them and replace local file to the new versions.

Files responsible for those operations:

project_manager/pm_updateLayer.py

project_manager/update_reader.py

project_manager/update_request.py

project_manager/pm_installUpdatesLayer.py

VCStudio and Blender-Organizer are free-software packages for organizing animated projects. Primarily to work with Blender3D. It's written in python and distributed as a set of scripts. So in theory with little work you can make it run on any OS. It's licensed with a GNU GPLv2 license. Primarily developer of the project (2018 - 2020) is J.Y.Amihud (also known as Blender Dumbass). Some projects done with this software may include I'm Not Even Human, The Package, The Car & The Time Is Running Out and Moria's Race.