Is the idea here to always check for latest version of pytools before each build run?

Yes. I think always manually informing every developer about new tool versions and asking them to update is quite a hassle. We also had it that builds with old tools caused trouble in dev branches. Having more and more devcontainers, sometimes multiple per repo, makes manual maintenance of the tools error prone and a bit annoying.

How does this impact offline-buildabliliy and also project that doesnt use the igtools?

The update check is designed to fail over. It shall continue in case it can't reach the internet or runs into another error. The curl also has a timeout, so it should not slow down the build in case of very slow internet. I did not test it through yet.

One thing to note: the update check is designed to fail over, but the update itself may not. I think it's a good thing, though. When an update is necessary, it should rather fail than build with an outdated version, right?

Would this force to have an online connection for the check and also install the tooling even if its not used in the project?

Good point, I did not consider that. One could just update when an outdated version is found locally, and not when no version is found. Or one could check whether the repo has a config file for the respective tool. I would prefer the second option, 'cause with that users don't need to worry about the tools on initial setup. I don't remember whether both tools have a config file, though. Will check that once I'm back.

What do you generally think of the idea to auto-update?

In generally i think it sound like a nice idea.

But there are also some buts, like i may want to explicitly use not the latest version of a tool, when there may be a bug. THe force update would prevent to run the workflow and maybe even build FHIR definitions.

At the end I think some kind of funktionality like this is good, but I would only introduce it when the processing is more configurable than now.

Agreed. I thought about adding an option to skip the update on build (in addition to only install/update tools when needed in the project) . Would that satisfy your concern?

I have added a paramter to skip the automatic update.

Also, the update will now just happen when an older version of the tool is installed, not anymore when it is not installed at all. I wanted this to be helpful during initial workspace setup, but it would also install pytools where they are not needed.