Updater

[probono]

I am working on an Updater that makes it easy to keep your collection of AppImages up-to-date.

Goals:

• Independent of distributions' package managers
• No need to deal with repositories, as each AppImage contains the information where the Updater has to look for updates
• Using the appcast format that is popular on the Mac
• Does not need to be root (for per-user apps), but can be run as root (for system-wide apps)

Status:

• Core functionality works
• Alternative appcast URLs specified in .desktop file still to be implemented
• Currently location of apps hardcoded to /Applications, which will change

Want to help on the development or simply try it out? Do the following:

• Create a directory /Applications
• Download the latest version of the Updater, put it in there
• Run it from a terminal - see how it checks the appcast; it should say "Your software is up to date"
• Rename the Updater, e.g., to "Updater 0.0.1", and run it again. This time, it suggests to download an update

Yes, I know there are many things to improve. So feel free to do just that, the Updater is written in Python and the full source code is contained in the AppImage.

Post here if you have produced an improved version.

[crazedpsyc]

Thanks for this project! I had to change the static path, as mentioned, and I also added try: except SockError:s to the urlopen calls so it cleanly accepts that it sometimes can not contact the server. Finally, I added a function to actually check the version, vs just printing it, and had it send a simple notification with pynotify instead of a window when it was finished.
--
I also created my own updater with a gui (progressbar and all) which uses my own xml app version-control lang, but it has to check localhost, so that doesn't help much .
I don't know how your updater gets app versions, but mine checks a file called "appinfo" in the same directory as the appimage. It contains a few things like "Version=0.16b3" and "Name=Firefox", "User=mike" (the user one is to tell my menu to run it as another user [zenmap is set to User=root)

Anyway, Sorry for my endless babble, I am glad there is an updater, and I would be glad to help out with it.

[probono]

Hi, if you know Python, why don't you unpack the Updater with AppImageExtract and take a look at the Python source code? It will answer all your questions, and maybe you can contribute. Would be great!

[probono]

The updater has been updated.

[TheZenKitteh]

I was about to say "Where is the download link?".. till I decided to look around a bit.

For others it seems it is here:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/portabl ... 1/download