Micah Lee:
It gets the current recommended version of TBB to install from: https://check.torproject.org/RecommendedTBBVersions
Good.
I've noticed that sometimes these are alphas, but sometimes they aren't.
I'm not sure who updates that document, or how they choose what versions to recommend.
I haven't found out that either until now.
But I believe that's also what TorButton uses to check for updates.
Yes, however, Tor Button will never (at least never happened to me) advise an alpha version, when you are using the non-alpha.
Before finding out about that URL, I was considering downloading https://www.torproject.org/dist/torbrowser/linux/ and programatically guessing what version to pick,
but RecommendedTBBVersions is a much saner approach.
Yes.
Assuming it will be always:
[ "2.3.25-6-MacOS", "2.3.25-6-Windows", "2.3.25-6-Linux", "2.4.11-alpha-2-MacOS", "2.4.11-alpha-2-Windows", "2.4.11-alpha-2-Linux" ]
Or.
[ "2.4.11-alpha-2-MacOS", "2.4.11-alpha-2-Windows", "2.4.11-alpha-2-Linux" "2.3.25-6-MacOS", "2.3.25-6-Windows", "2.3.25-6-Linux", ]
(If the decision is to make non-alpha default for all users....)
Speaking /bin/bash...
Just grep for "alpha" and ignore those line. (Unless you're adding an option to prefer the alpha version.)
Ignore "Windows" and "MacOS" as well.
What's left is "2.3.25-6-Linux", remove the ", using sed, remove the other " using sed.
Whats left is "2.3.25-6-Linux", remove the "-Linux" with sed and you're done, ending up with "2.3.25-6".
Works well for Whonix. Implementation: https://github.com/adrelanos/Whonix/blob/development/whonix_shared/usr/local...
There is most likely a more elegant/clever way in bash / java script (didn't check how Tor Button phrases it) / python.