Automatically install updates on Mac

[teocomi]

We've been successfully using NetSparkle for a while now; thanks for it!
On Windows, we can get updates to be automatically installed without any user interaction (using exe); on Mac instead the new dmg is downloaded and launched automatically, but the user still has to:

• override the previous app
• re-launch the app
• close the dmg folder

Some users have reported this being a bit annoying, is there any way to automate these steps?

[Deadpikle]

Hi @teocomi,

Sorry for not replying to your message yet. I apologize. Life is extremely busy right now and I am struggling to keep up, plus I am on a 3-week trip starting Wednesday! (I think one of your team members also pinged me on Twitter once and I never replied. Oops. Apologies.)

Short version: This should be doable in one way or another. Sparkle does this and utilizing their AutoUpdate.app in some way is not entirely out of the question, although I'm not sure how I feel about downloading an external application just to update an app.

A very very basic way would be to just arbitrarily copy the .app in the .dmg to /Applications (see basic support here) in the shell script that opens the DMG. Or, you could package your app as a .zip and simply extract over your current .app file (which is sort of already supported).

But neither of those really think about or consider sandboxing, which I have no clue how to handle without more research.

[teocomi]

Thanks for your reply during such busy times; we know what it feels like :)
We'll give it a try and report back!

[Deadpikle]

@teocomi,

I had a few minutes to try things out. I wanted to try without any extra downloads. See branch feature/macos-dmg-auto-install-restart. It successfully mounts the DMG, extracts the .app file, and unmounts the DMG. However, the final open SimpleApp.app line (to actually restart the software) fails with the obscure error No application knows how to open URL SimpleApp.app. Don't know what's going on there yet. But there's a branch you can test around with — specifically the NetSparkle.Samples.Avalonia.MacOS sample in that branch.

[teocomi]

Hey @Deadpikle, thanks so much for this!!

I tried it and have some comments:

• I think the command to launch the app should be open -a ""{executableName}"""; (with the -a flag)
• When I try this locally I get a permission window briefly, and then it disappears, so I cannot fill in my password, is this expected?

[Deadpikle]

@teocomi

I think the command to launch the app should be open -a ""{executableName}"""; (with the -a flag)

This fixed that problem. Nice! Thank you. I just got a full update and auto-restart to work.

When I try this locally I get a permission window briefly, and then it disappears, so I cannot fill in my password, is this expected?

🤔 It showing up is expected; I'm running the commands as sudo so it asks for an admin prompt. (I haven't yet tested without that but even Sparkle has that IIRC. Ideally, I'd love to make that say that "MyApp" is wanting to make changes or something...) I'm not sure why it's disappearing on your computer though...clearly needs some more debugging/fixing/work.

If you want to use the battle-tested Sparkle project on macOS, https://github.com/Deadpikle/macOS.SparkleUpdater.Avalonia might be helpful to you. Frankly, I'll be the first to admit that this project is not nearly as battle-hardened as the Sparkle project that has been in use for (I believe) well over a decade.

[teocomi]

It seems like the osascript process is launched as a child of the Avalonia App one, so when it exits that is closed too.
I tried changing UseShellExecute = true but the same happens...
Is it because I'm debugging? I'm on an M1 Ventura 13.0.1 .