Notify and/or auto update Tor

[Will]

Option to notify if the version of Tor the user is running is out of date. (Option to choose from stable version or development version notification).

Also, possibly, if version is out of date, have Tor be auto updated (according to either stable or dev version checked).

[edmanm]

Checking to see if the user's Tor or Vidalia isn't the latest and then giving an appropriate message is reasonable, but actually doing the update is probably not since there are so many ways people might choose to install their Tor. On Windows, it would be relatively simple since everyone just downloads a .exe installer. But, on Mac installation is much different, and so is installation on Debian, Red Hat, Gentoo, FreeBSD, etc. Some people might also prefer to build their Tor from source.

So, I'm all in favor of prompting the user to remind them that their Tor or Vidalia is out-of-date, but the auto-update deal would most likely end up being a Windows-only sort of thing, if it was implemented.

Also, Tor already automatically gets a list of recommended versions (i.e., not ancient or deemed insecure) from the directory servers and then will log a warn message if it sees that it is an unrecommended version, which will appear highlighted in yellow in the message log.

[Will]

I agree with it being on Windows. As for the warning in the message log, I'm not sure how many people actually check the log, so a pop-up notification in Windows reminding the user that their is an updated version might be a good feature.

[Will]

Sorry, meant to say I agree with everything you said above.