All the relevant tidbits from Sparkle, a very shiny solution to a very boring problem.
I just wanted to plug a couple of tools now available for automatic appcast creation.
The first is SparkleCaster, a Cocoa app by Adam Radestock. I’ve mentioned it on here before, but it’s made some progress—check it out and see if it fits your needs.
The second is new: a tutorial on using Rake to make appcasts. This is the kind of badassery that keeps me using Ruby.
Keep on rocking, folks! 1.5b2 soon.
For those wonderful prospective localizers, you should know that I’ve actually already changed a few strings since 1.5b1 (doh!). One of my localizers pointed out some flaws.
Anyway, here’s a new English strings file and test app to use to test with: Sparkle 1.5b1 Localization Pack.
I may need to update things some more if there are more problems; I’ll update this entry if that happens. Alternately, you can keep abreast of changes in a much easier (for me, at least) way using Bazaar.
I’ve got Sparkle 1.5b1 out, but unfortunately, I don’t have time to write the documentation or any of the supporting material at the moment.
This is kind of a problem.
So until I get a chance to do that, following is a brief guide on using Bazaar to contribute to Sparkle.
First, you’ll have to get Bazaar. The easiest way to do that is to grab a .pkg from the project homepage. MacPorts is more trouble than you want to deal with.
Now, here’s all it takes to get a fresh copy of Sparkle’s code:
bzr branch lp:sparkle
Well, it’s been a long time coming, but Sparkle 1.5 is finally available. Except it’s Sparkle 1.5b1. This means I think it’s done, and lots of people have been using it for a while, but it might still have rough edges.
There’s a new site, too, and it’s dramatically simplified. Documentation is… forthcoming, I’m afraid—if you want to use any of the really fancy new features, you’ll have to take a look at the code to see how to do it. Sorry about that. I’ll get to it in a few weeks.
I’m also actively soliciting localizations. All of Sparkle’s old ones are wayyyy out of date. If you’re interested in doing a localization, you should email me so that we can coordinate and not have many people doing one language.
What’s new? Oh goodness, tons of stuff.
If you click some of the links along the right side of Sparkle’s home page, you might notice that they lead to some new places…
Sorry, Git lovers, my guts took me to Bazaar and Launchpad. It wasn’t really a Git vs. Bzr thing; it was a Launchpad vs. Lighthouse+Github thing. I’m really pleased with the new solution so far, and I hope you’ll follow me to new and maintainable horizons.
Sparkle’s development now has a new home, complete with a new source repository and a new bug tracker.
Soon-ish, I’ll get up a new, simplified Sparkle home page—one that doesn’t have four different nav bars—and wiki. If any of you lovely designers in the audience feel like contributing, I’d love the help. I’m also looking into enabling the translations and blueprints sections for Sparkle on Launchpad.
Update: Some people were saying they were having trouble getting Bazaar going on OS X. It’s actually pretty simple: just get MacPorts and run:
sudo port install bzr
Hi there. I'm Andy Matuschak, a computer science student at Caltech, but a software engineer at heart. I'm a long-time Cocoa programmer and a user experience nutcase and all that—you can read about what I've done or what I'm working on elsewhere.
I do have an untechy side, too. I'm a singer first and foremost, a passable pianist, and a okay-maybe-needs-more-experience actor. I love to teach. I love to write. But most of all, I'm quite helplessly in love with life.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to reach me by email or by AIM. I'll do my best to get back to you rapidly, but Caltech is a cruel mistress.
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