About Companion & Auto Updates

In case you've been using the beta channel of our WeakAuras Companion recently, you might have seen the above error in the status bar. We've investigated and traced it back to a bug in Electron, the software we use to build Companion.

Now, the unfortunate part is that this error will be shown to all users once we publish the next version. No one will be able to update to the next version of Companion without manual interaction. So once we publish a new version, everyone will have to re-download the installer and run it manually.

We're sorry for the trouble and we know this error has been happening for quite a while but the bug has not exactly received the urgent attention and action from the Electron team that it should have. And we are still waiting for them to publish it in a release of their own.

We'll post again once the situation is resolved and let you know when you can download the new Companion.

Now something for auto updates in general,

In order to enable automatic updates, you need a certificate to sign your code so your computer can make sure that the thing it's downloading is actually coming from us and not some rogue third party. Sadly, our certificate is about to expire and the company we bought it from, is asking for a price we are not willing to pay.

While there are other companies that sell certificates that are, by themselves, marginally more expensive or even cheaper then our current one, the process around getting them is attached to additional costs because you have to get your proof of identity documents signed by a notary. And those guys ask for around 70€ per document. Yup.

We are currently trying to solve this, but it looks like getting a certificate is a huge hassle for a Open Source project that has no actual organization behind them. This means that we are going to disable auto-updates in general in a future release, until this issue has been solved.

If you are reading this and know a lot about code signing certificates and how to acquire them as a private person living in Europe without having to sell your kidney for it, please contact us on our Discord. Any help is appreciated!

That's it for now, we hope you had a great holiday season and wish you a happy new year!