Comments on: Christopher Atlan to the Rescue! And Neat Plans

By: Waldorf

Waldorf — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 16:13:48 +0000

David: Good point. Though you are going to get this message only once.
Maybe a programatic interface ( [Sparkle install] ?) would be favorable since you (as a dev) could create your own setup wizard, or just incude it in your own installer package as an option.

By: David Smith

David Smith — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 06:56:00 +0000

Google Desktop runs a local webserver as well, although perhaps its reputation these days is a little less than savory ;) Regardless, it’s a fairly accepted and non-resource-intensive technique. You just use something nice and lightweight, and it gets paged out when not needed.

I like this idea a lot.

Waldorf: Some (many?) apps already show one or more dialogs on first launch. Adium is my interest, so I’ll use it as the example. There’s a quicksilver-like initial setup wizard, and the growl installer (which I loathe). Adding Sparkle to the list would make three separate things to click through, two of which installed “something”. That’s a lot of trust to ask from a new user, and a lot of hassle for them to actually get to the app.

By: Andy Matuschak

Andy Matuschak — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:33:08 +0000

Yes, this is exactly how the Mac OS X Server does it. And that’s why it’s not hackery: it’s what Apple itself does.

Running a server all the time isn’t unreasonable: you’ve got probably a dozen of them running on your machine right now. If I use a tiny server, it’ll take something like 4mb of RAM and no CPU while Software Update.app isn’t running.

By: Waldorf

Waldorf — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 12:02:50 +0000

One more thing…
As a user, and dev, I wouldn’t mind a dialog à la “This app uses a technology called […] but but updates will also work without installing, only not so smoothly in the background.”
If the dialog is the dialog is understandable, descriptive and also works without installing Sparkle on your system then I wouldn’t mind, at all!

Seriously, you’re only going to see it once.

By: Waldorf

Waldorf — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 10:30:28 +0000

I do not like this idea at all. This is hackery, and will scare people off. If only because their truste apple software update app is suddenly checking an verifying third-party apps.
Naming is ok I think: Many know that Sparkle is used to update their apps, and thus an external updating app/preference pane should be named accordingly. Developer wise it is named Sparkle.framework anyway, I think this gives more then enough distinguishment.
It is a different App and it does deserve a ui of it own, even if it is just a duplicated ui.
Btw. is this what MacOSX Server does? Doesn’t running a web-server all the time, just for whenever “Software Update.app” feels like updating, a bit overkill? Also, if we’re going to modd it to this, maybe make it network-able over bonjour. let one mac look for updates, and serve it up over the LAN.

Again, I’m against (!!!) this kind of integration, but it does offer some advantages, I admit.