Support

Right now we do not have any plans on replacing those plugins. The one click update link posed a mild security threat. If the email was intercepted by a malicious actor before you clicked on it they could visit that URL and gain Super User access to your site. The first step I took in the previous release was to remove the automatic log in and have you need to enter the username and password to log in to the site before installing the update. This made the plugin useless for people like you who manage dozens of sites. It was also pretty pointless for people managing just a handful of sites. So it made no sense maintaining that plugin any more and I made it obsolete.

Right now the best approach is to use a third party service like Watchful to receive notifications about updates and install the updates among multiple sites. Of course it comes at a price.

I am also exploring the possibility of writing a native CRON script which can automatically install updates of our software on your server. I am still not sure if it's at all possible. Joomla!'s extensions installer wasn't made with automation in mind and we are not allowed to circumvent it on penalty of being banished from the Joomla! extensions directory.

Sorry for not having any good news :(

A CRON job script sounds awesome if you can pull it off without upsetting the Joomla team

My biggest concern is whether the JInstaller class is able to run an extension installation in a CLI environment. I am still analysing the code. Seeing that someone else has written a CLI tool to install extensions I have high hopes ;)

Seems to me it makes sense to have that available as part of the whole Joomla package, just like most software vendors do.

If I can make it work for one software package I will have to merely change an easy 20 lines of code to turn it into a generic auto-updater for all installed extensions. As we've done in the past when creating a universally useful feature (update notifications, Joomla! Update, two factor authentication) we'll propose it for inclusion in Joomla! itself.

Take Microsoft for example. Whilst I love to hate them, their auto updates save a bunch of time, even if some of their updates are bigger viruses than most viruses!! :-)

You have summed up the pros and cons of automatic updates :) Having automatic updates helps you with better security of your sites, but a botched update can screw your site. It's a "use with caution" kind of thing.