Thanks! Your method seems quite doable. (although I was hoping
someone had already written something commercially available). Just
one more thing to add to my to-do list! But thanks again for
confirming to me how to do it and that it is possible (although the
deletion issue will be something I'll need to work around)
On Mar 26, 2006, at 10:47 AM, Thom McGrath wrote:
My method seems to work perfectly. Traditionally, the developer
would create two downloads: complete, and app-only. This is because
with auto-update, the extra files are not needed.
But I didn't like this. I wanted to have one download. So my
download is a internet-enabled self-extracting disk image (per
Apple's suggestion) with a single file - the application. So when
the user downloads the file, it's simple and very Mac OS X native.
The package behaves as my users expect.
When it comes time to auto-update, the app downloads the exact same
file as a new user would. It then mounts the disk image, renames
itself to <app name>.old while running (it works), copies the new
version into the same directory, unmounts the image, throws it
away, launches the new version, then quits itself. Because an app
cannot delete itself, the new app looks for the old copy and will
delete it at launch. The process works completely automatically, no
user interaction at all (except, of course, the user accepting the
new version).
A snag you may run into is deleting the old version. Mac OS X may
not allow you to without a password. For my application, it
displays a standard auth window. For your setup, this may not work
out.
Basically, it's possible, and not too difficult. Contact me off-
list if you need some more detailed help.
--
Thom McGrath, <http://www.thezaz.com/>
"You realize you've created God in your own image when God hates
all the same people you do."
On Mar 26, 2006, at 10:33 AM, Steve Weintraut wrote:
My need is merely to provide apps for our Mac-Only internal
network at our company. When I write in RealBasic, I have a
routine that checks with our database server to see if there is a
newer version than what is currently loaded on the users machine
and they call our department to get the newer version loaded for
them.
The problem is that with dozens of users, this gets old fast.
I was wondering if anyone knew of a way of auto-updating an
application. I would think that somehow the new version would have
to be downloaded to a temp directory, the current version moves
itself to the trash (is that even possible?), and then quits and
relaunches the new version after copying it to the applications
folder on OS X
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