Comments on: A Compromise and an Idea

By: Andy Matuschak

Andy Matuschak — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:10:58 +0000

Thanks for the extra feedback, guys.

I’m definitely working on the “getting a new official release” thing going: believe me, I don’t want you releasing your apps on untested bzr source any more than you do.

By: Jeff Johnson

Jeff Johnson — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 14:56:56 +0000

Peter has it exactly right. We’ll update Sparkle if you release it. AFAIK, there hasn’t been an official release since 1.1. I’m not complaining about that — free software is a gift, not an entitlement. On the other hand, you can’t expect us to take bug fixes unless you include them in a release. We were thinking about including Sparkle 1.5b1 in Vienna 2.3, but then I discovered that 1.5b1 wasn’t localized yet, so it was a non-starter for us.

By: Rob Rix

Rob Rix — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 12:29:41 +0000

This sounds like a social problem as much as, or more than, a technical one. If that’s true, then the main issue is making sure that the developers are informed.

Maybe the Sparkle distribution should recommend—via the website, docs, etc—that you subscribe to some pertinent RSS feed that announces Sparkle updates (and nothing else)? You could even include an UpdateSparkle app that would download the latest to a new location, if you felt so inclined…

By: Peter

Peter — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:53:47 +0000

Sparkle’s simplicity of distribution is precisely the reason number 1 of his success. In my opinion, your best bet is to help as much as you can developers to keep the framework up to date in their particular instance.

Exactly. Such as making more frequent releases ;) Really. I take care to include the latest *released* versions of frameworks used, but I’m not going to go down the “using latest bzr trunk sources” path, I can’t spend that much time testing everything in 3rd party frameworks.

By: Giuseppe

Giuseppe — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 08:38:36 +0000

Sparkle’s simplicity of distribution is precisely the reason number 1 of his success. In my opinion, your best bet is to help as much as you can developers to keep the framework up to date in their particular instance.

Keep up the good work Andy.

By: Shot down!

Shot down! — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:25:24 +0000

[…] so it’s sounding like the risk and work involved in my last proposal outweigh the […]

By: Andy Matuschak

Andy Matuschak — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:23:21 +0000

Sounds like the risk and work outweighs the usefulness.

The main usefulness isn’t space on disk and so on—it’s mostly that I’ll fix bugs (potentially serious ones), and users won’t get those fixes.

Thanks for the feedback, guys.

By: Robert Marini

Robert Marini — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 05:28:35 +0000

But Robert, Adobe Updater is enterprise-class and realizes synergies for their clients!

If by that, you mean causes them to flock to Adobe headquarters as a unified mob complete with torches, then yes - it’s aces.

By: Steven Riggs

Steven Riggs — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:50:35 +0000

I agree with Gorbach. I like to have 100% control and like to have tested a framework update myself before it gets deployed to my users. Good thoughts but I like it just the way it is.

By: Michael Gorbach

Michael Gorbach — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:39:34 +0000

Seems like it can work. However, my concern is similar to that noted earlier. One of the awesome advantages of having Sparkle in the package is that developers have 100% complete control of the behavior of their individual app. It looks like the new concept might encroach on that, meaning the exact behavior of the app may change as Sparkle is updated.
Is separate frameworks such a bad thing? Honestly, I think the extra disk space is a non-issue relative to our drive sizes. The UI concern is more serious, and would be a very big deal in general. Sparkle though, has very little UI, so maybe this is not so important?