fix: do not contact crates.io to check for updates

[ROMemories]

This reduces the number of dependencies and improves privacy of users, who may not expect a flashing tool to directly make HTTP requests. It also makes flashing faster when network is not available, as it is then not needed to wait for the HTTP connection to timeout.

[MabezDev]

Thanks for the PR! Whilst I appreciate your concerns, we do this to reduce the issue reports from people using older versions. You are welcome to use espflash as a library and create your own CLI tool that meets your requirements.

A PR we would accept would be to add an --offline flag which disables this check to get the speed improvement on non-internet connected devices.

[ROMemories]

A PR we would accept would be to add an --offline flag which disables this check to get the speed improvement on non-internet connected devices.

Would you also consider a PR feature-gating this behind an update-check (or whichever name you prefer) Cargo feature, enabled by default? This would still reduce the number of dependencies when disabled, and would also avoid the need for modifying scripts using espflash (which may not benefit from this update check at all anyway).

we do this to reduce the issue reports from people using older versions

I understand this concern very well, maybe you would also want to consider adding an issue template, explicitly asking to check that they are indeed running the latest version of espflash (if you get most of your reports as GitHub issues)?

In any case, thanks a lot for you quick reply!