unsupervised-scheduler/docs/features/plugin-self-update.md

Feature: Plugin Self-Update from Gitea Releases

Overview

WordPress sites running this plugin receive updates directly from the Gitea repository's releases — no wordpress.org listing and no manual zip uploads. Publishing a release is the whole deploy: bump the version, merge to main, tag vX.Y.Z in Gitea. Every site sees the update on its next check and can install it with one click, or unattended if the site admin enables auto-updates for the plugin.

How It Works

Release side (.gitea/workflows/release.yml)

Pushing a v* tag (including tags created through Gitea's "New Release" UI) triggers the release workflow, which:

1. Fails if the tag does not match the Version: plugin header — a mismatch would make sites see a phantom update forever, or never see a real one.
2. Runs the test suite.
3. Builds the distributable zip via composer build (bin/build-zip.sh): a single top-level unsupervised-schedular/ folder with a production (no-dev) Composer autoloader.
4. Creates the release for the tag (or reuses one created via the UI) and attaches the zip as a release asset. Versions containing a hyphen (e.g. 1.2.3-rc.1) are flagged as pre-releases.

The attached asset — not Gitea's auto-generated source archive — is the update package. Source archives have the wrong top-level folder name and no vendor/ directory, so WordPress could not install them.

Site side (src/Update/UpdateChecker.php)

The plugin header declares:

Update URI: https://git.unsupervised.ca/Unsupervised/unsupervised-scheduler

Since WP 5.8 that header both blocks wordpress.org from ever serving an update for a same-slug plugin and makes core fire the update_plugins_git.unsupervised.ca filter during update checks. UpdateChecker (registered in Plugin::boot()) answers that filter:

1. Fetches GET /api/v1/repos/Unsupervised/unsupervised-scheduler/releases/latest (anonymous — the repo is public). The /latest endpoint excludes drafts and pre-releases, so -rc builds are never offered to sites.
2. Caches the result (including failures) in the us_schedular_latest_release transient for 6 hours.
3. Strips the leading v from the tag and compares against USC_VERSION with version_compare; PHP orders 1.0.0-rc.2 < 1.0.0 correctly.
4. When newer, returns the release's first .zip asset as the update package. Core takes over from there: Plugins-screen notice, one-click update, and WP-Cron auto-updates if enabled.
5. When not newer — the site is current, or the lookup failed — returns a no_update payload (installed version, empty package). This keeps the plugin in core's update_plugins transient so core's update-supported flag stays set and the Enable auto-updates toggle shows on the Plugins screen. Without it, an off-directory plugin is absent from the transient between releases and the toggle never appears.

Any API failure, malformed response, or asset-less release degrades to "no update available" (the no_update payload) — never an error surfaced to the site, and never a lost auto-update toggle during a Gitea blip.

Cutting a Release

1. Bump the version in unsupervised-schedular.php (both the Version: header and the USC_VERSION constant) and merge to main.
2. Tag the merge commit vX.Y.Z — via Gitea's New Release UI or git tag vX.Y.Z && git push origin vX.Y.Z.
3. The release workflow attaches the zip; sites pick the update up on their next check (twice daily via cron, or immediately from Dashboard → Updates → Check again).

Classes

Class	Responsibility
Update\UpdateChecker	Answers core's update_plugins_{hostname} filter from the Gitea releases API

Tests

• tests/Unit/Update/UpdateCheckerTest.php