Automate Website Update on Processing Release with GitHub Workflows

[SableRaf]

Problem Statement

The Processing download page does not currently update automatically when a new version is released. As a result, the website must be updated manually through a multi-step process, which can be time-consuming for maintainers.

Proposed Solution

Instead of manually triggering fetchReleases.js, the update of the website can be automated with GitHub workflows whenever a new version of Processing is released. The automation process will fetch the releases from both the Processing and Processing4 repositories and write them to JSON files in the content/download/releases directory. For more information, refer to fetchReleases.js.

The action should make a new release for the website and deploy it by interacting with the existing deploy workflow.

Note: this change will require the Processing4 repository to dispatch an event upon the creation of a new release.

Benefits

• The website will always be up-to-date, providing users with accurate information about the latest version of Processing.
• The manual process of updating the website will be automated, reducing the workload on maintainers and improving efficiency.
• A better user experience, as users will have access to the latest information about Processing at all times.

References

Dispatch event: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/26323#discussioncomment-3251448

Notes

The corresponding issue on the processing4 repository can be found at processing/processing4#665

[shahnoor-khan]

I can work on this! Can u assign this to me ?

[SableRaf]

Hi @shahnoor-khan! Sure. Let me know if you need any input on this.

I would suggest you post on the corresponding issue on the Processing repo so I can assign it to you too: processing/processing4#665

Thanks in advance for your help!

[shahnoor-khan]

Thanks @SableRaf! I work on this issue and will ping u, if help is needed.

yeah pls assign me that issue as well.

[SableRaf]

Hi @shahnoor-khan. I'd like to suggest a small change to the proposed solution. Instead of automatically updating the website, it would be better to automatically create a Pull Request. This way, there would still be a human in the loop to review and approve the changes before they go live.

[shahnoor-khan]

Okay @SableRaf. Will definitely try it that way.

[adwait-godbole]

Hi @SableRaf, I was working on fixing this issue to ease the manual efforts of the maintainers. Can you please help me, I have a query. Why is processing-0227-2.2.1 mentioned over here? On the releases page of the old repository at https://github.com/processing/processing/releases, the last release indeed has the tag of processing-0270-3.5.4, so it makes sense that it is present in selected.json but why is processing-0227-2.2.1 currently mentioned over there?

[adwait-godbole]

Hi @SableRaf, I was working on fixing this issue to ease the manual efforts of the maintainers. Can you please help me, I have a query. Why is processing-0227-2.2.1 mentioned over here? On the releases page of the old repository at https://github.com/processing/processing/releases, the last release indeed has the tag of processing-0270-3.5.4, so it makes sense that it is present in selected.json but why is processing-0227-2.2.1 currently mentioned over there?

Apolgies for my silly query, I just visited the https://processing.org/releases page on the website and now I know why processing-0227-2.2.1 is present in selected.json.

[adwait-godbole]

@SableRaf should we fix processing-0270-3.5.4 and processing-0227-2.2.1 as tag-names that will always be a part of selected.json (given that the processing/processing repository hasn't been releasing any new tags/assets for almost 4 years now, I assume there won't be any new releases in future as well?).

If we don't decide on keeping processing-0270-3.5.4 and processing-0227-2.2.1 as CONSTANT tag-names in selected.json, then I am guessing a similar dispatch event trigger will also have to be engineered into the processing/processing repository to notify this website repository of the new release.

lmk your thoughts on this.

[SableRaf]

Apolgies for my silly query, I just visited the https://processing.org/releases page on the website and now I know why processing-0227-2.2.1 is present in selected.json.

Hi @adwait-godbole,

It's not silly! 😃 Sorry it took me a while to get back to you.

The reason is that 2.2.1 is the last stable release of Processing 2 so if people need to use this legacy version for any reason, this is the release we recommend they use. Same for 3.5.4 and Processing 3.

No further development is planned on these legacy version of Processing, therefore they can stay in selected.json and should never need to be updated.

Great that you're interested in helping with this issue. Let me know if you need any support!