cocoaforge

I find it surprising that Sparkle is downloading full versions of Adium rather than only those files necessary to update it to the current version. Is this the intended behavior?, or will Sparkle eventually (out of Adium betas, perhaps) function with truly "updates" in mind?, more like Apple's Software Update can.

hi earthsaver, Adium is intendet to behave like this and i'm shure it won't change.

Adium itself is a single package, so it would be difficult (although not impossible, I guess) to download just the changed files. However, I believe it just downloads the same file that can be downloaded manually from the web, which helps to simplify the process of distributing the application.

earthsaver wrote:I find it surprising that Sparkle is downloading full versions of Adium rather than only those files necessary to update it to the current version. Is this the intended behavior?, or will Sparkle eventually (out of Adium betas, perhaps) function with truly "updates" in mind?, more like Apple's Software Update can.

If you'd be willing to code this, we'd certainly welcome it. It's something that I've looked into, but I haven't had the time to do it, and don't expect to anytime soon.

Fair enough. I'm not a developer and won't be coding it either. Just wanted to find out if it had crossed your mind. Perhaps Adium X 1.5 will see it. Perhaps not.

One possible method for this would be zsync. It's still fairly nontrivial though.

My understanding is that software update doesn't do this either, except with os x updates themselves.

Well, that much is true, I suppose. However, the Installer in general is capable of recognizing that an application already exists and properly reports how much disk space is necessary to "upgrade" it. Not sure if it actually replaces the entire app or just adds the missing pieces and updates the changed ones, but it seems possible. Being able to do the latter would be a great savings of bandwidth, don't you think?

Software Update uses packages to delta the architectural changes and receipts to track the update revisions that have occurred. This would require a non-trivial amount of work in Sparkle I'd think, and there's the added vector of multi-version skips (i.e., user skips 1.0.1, gets 1.0.2, but 1.0.2 is delta'd from 1.0.1 and the 1.0.1 changes don't come along unless sequential updates apply... the edge-casing can be great I'd imagine.)

And the expense is quite different -- we're talking about trying to decrease a 20-MB-or-less download, versus the potential expense of a multi-gig download to do the whole OS.

I suppose one of the causes behind my decision to post about this is I've been using a particularly slow DSL connection the last couple weeks. The slower speed to download 20MB has been quite noticeable, especially when I'm not using Speed Download to maximize the rate of download. Sure, the owner could choose to upgrade her account for not much, though I'm still not sure she needs more speed.

Anyway, I think the Mac OS X update example is a good precedent in that one could get a simple delta update for the next point version but is forced to download a full size combo update for any more. On the Adium side, a user downloading every version in succession might get smaller updates at a time compared to a user updating less frequently who would be forced to capture the entire app each time.

There has to be a mechanism to generate these deltas, and at worst this is done by hand which increases the amount of work necessary for a release and best requires the coding of an automated system somehow [and a developer for that.]

bgannin wrote:There has to be a mechanism to generate these deltas, and at worst this is done by hand which increases the amount of work necessary for a release and best requires the coding of an automated system somehow [and a developer for that.]

zsync

It'd still require a good bit of integration work though.

According to Sparkle-creator Andy, someone previously was using zsync to make the delta update process work. This now-unknown developer or Andy will probably get it done one of these days when he has a chance. Just wanted to let interested folks know the status of the project.

Also worth mentioning, Andy is working on setting up a Trac for Sparkle and opening up access for other people to the commit trees.

earthsaver wrote:According to Sparkle-creator Andy, someone previously was using zsync to make the delta update process work. This now-unknown developer or Andy will probably get it done one of these days when he has a chance. Just wanted to let interested folks know the status of the project.

Also worth mentioning, Andy is working on setting up a Trac for Sparkle and opening up access for other people to the commit trees.

Actually, we're hosting Sparkle's svn repository at the moment; I've done some work on it in a few areas. I found out about zsync from talking to Andy.

Though all our localization updates go to the SparklePlus repository... those really need to get merged, IMO.

earthsaver wrote:Also worth mentioning, Andy is working on setting up a Trac for Sparkle and opening up access for other people to the commit trees.

I can give anyone who needs it access so long as andy pings me about them.