Introduce Update Channels #278

What it does

The goal of this PR is to add a second update channel.

Until now every commit was built and the result was pushed to https://download.eclipse.org/theia/ide/

With this PR we will instead push the results to https://download.eclipse.org/theia/ide-preview/ The ide-preview location may be used for testing the IDE before we promote it to https://download.eclipse.org/theia/ide/

For the promotion there will be a new Jenkinsfile in this PR that will be used to copy the results. This needs to be triggered manually on the build server then.

Finally there is a new preference for selecting an update channel. The current options are stable (https://download.eclipse.org/theia/ide/ Released Theia Version, Theia IDE was tested before promotion) and preview (https://download.eclipse.org/theia/ide-preview/ Released Theia Versions, Used for testing before promotion to general public). We may add a third option for Theia Nightlies in the future (non-released nightly builds of Theia).

Contributed on behalf of STMicroelectronics

How to test

Update channels

Testing the update channels requires some local adjustments. See the image below to check a valid file structure for local testing on linux.. This structure mimics our download.eclipse.org layout

prepare sources for local testing by doing a workspace wide search and replace for "https://download.eclipse.org/theia/" with "http://localhost:5000/". This should update electron-builder.yml and theia-updater-impl. Please verify that the changes look sensible to you, meaning the resulting URLs look valid to you (no missing or additional "/" e.g.)
build a "stable" realease with yarn && yarn build:dev && yarn electron package
create a new directory somewhere on your hard drive. Within this directory, create two further directories "ide" and "ide-preview"
within the ide directory create one directory called "latest" and one directory called "1.45.0" (Should be the version used in applications/electron/package.json)
within those two directories, create a further directory based on your os: "windows", "macos", or "linux"
Now copy the contents of "applications/electron/dist" inside these directories
Now increment the patch part of the version in applications/electron/package.json, e.g. from 1.45.0 to 1.45.1
Build a "preview" release with yarn && yarn build:dev && yarn electron package
within the ide-preview directory create one directory called "latest" and one directory called "1.45.1" (Should be the updated version from applications/electron/package.json)
within those two directories, create a further directory based on your os: "windows", "macos", or "linux"
Now copy the contents of "applications/electron/dist" inside these directories
From the directory containing the "ide" and "ide-preview" directories, run npx serve -d -u -p 5000. The output logs will have valuable information for verifying the channels.
Point your browser to http://localhost:5000/ to check if you can see the ide and ide-preview directories
Now launch the "stable" installer/application (this is the one available in the ide directory)
File -> Preferences -> Check for Updates...
The logs of the npx serve should show three accesses to /ide (1st one is stable location that happens on startup of the application, 2nd one happens when the preference was reported from electron frontend to backend, 3rd one was out manual "Check for Updates...")

 HTTP  1/19/2024 2:35:23 PM ::1 GET /ide/latest/linux/latest-linux.yml?noCache=1hkguts90
 HTTP  1/19/2024 2:35:23 PM ::1 Returned 200 in 5 ms
 HTTP  1/19/2024 2:35:25 PM ::1 GET /ide/latest/linux/latest-linux.yml?noCache=1hkguttlg
 HTTP  1/19/2024 2:35:25 PM ::1 Returned 200 in 0 ms
 HTTP  1/19/2024 2:35:58 PM ::1 GET /ide/latest/linux/latest-linux.yml?noCache=1hkguuu1a
 HTTP  1/19/2024 2:35:58 PM ::1 Returned 200 in 1 ms

Now go to the preferences and search for updates.channel. Update from stable to preview
File -> Preferences -> Check for Updates...

Select "No" to not install the updates. There should be one new log

HTTP  1/19/2024 2:43:17 PM ::1 GET /ide-preview/latest/linux/latest-linux.yml?noCache=1hkgvcb62
HTTP  1/19/2024 2:43:17 PM ::1 Returned 200 in 0 ms

Now restart the IDE to check if the update is reported in startup automatically. This should create new logs like this (again stable is always checked on startup, only then we may update the preference)

HTTP  1/19/2024 2:44:49 PM ::1 GET /ide/latest/linux/latest-linux.yml?noCache=1hkgvf48l
HTTP  1/19/2024 2:44:49 PM ::1 Returned 200 in 0 ms
HTTP  1/19/2024 2:44:50 PM ::1 GET /ide-preview/latest/linux/latest-linux.yml?noCache=1hkgvf5lh
HTTP  1/19/2024 2:44:50 PM ::1 Returned 200 in 1 ms

Install the update and continue manual testing

ksnip_20240119-145339

Build Jobs

The build jobs need to be tested on the Eclipse CI. I don't have local testing instructions.

Review checklist

[x] as an author, I have thoroughly tested my changes and carefully followed the review guidelines

Reminder for reviewers

as a reviewer, I agree to behave in accordance with the review guidelines

eclipse-theia / theia-ide