(option to) Check for newer version before download (avoid double cycle when 2+ releases happened)

[ldemailly]

Apologies in advance for some of the vagueness in the description, I don't use sparkle itself, just use ghostty which uses sparkle and I was referred here to submit my UX issue

Issue:

• ghostty checks for updates somewhat regularly, when it finds one it posts a "download new" button
• if I don't click the button immediately (for instance because ghostty is in the background or I go to sleep and come back the next day and see the button only then)
• when i click to download and then install and then restart...
• and check for update: there is a new update available

so I have to go through 2 cycles of download+install+restart instead of 1, to get the latest

ghostty claims there is nothing they can do to improve that UX

Me

surely you can recheck when I click the blue button irrespective of what upstream sparkle does?

Answer I got

We cannot
Once it’s in the update state the check for update method does nothing.
And the state machine is driven by sparkle

[ldemailly]

If not an option to recheck, than any workaround (like maybe closing and reopening said state machine etc) - tia

[zorgiepoo]

In spirit this seems like a dupe of #2469. Currently this sounds like expected behavior.

..and check for update: there is a new update available

It's not clear to me if you manually checked for updates here or if the app showed you a second update alert. Because Sparkle is supposed to defer doing another automatic check if you've just installed an update (even if you don't click the install button immediately). So you shouldn't see an automatic update alert right when you relaunch the app (and I don't see Ghostty doing any background checks that would override the automatic scheduler). I'll wait for feedback to confirm what you're seeing on this point.

[zorgiepoo]

If you're at this window: https://github.com/sparkle-project/Sparkle/blob/2.x/Resources/Screenshot2.png

You can restart the "state machine" by closing the window and checking for updates from the app's menu bar (typically). If you've turned on automatically downloading/installing updates in the background and the update has already been downloaded, then you'd have to Skip This Version and check for updates again (does not sound like your case). If you are already at the smaller "Install and Relaunch" window, it is kind of too late, and anyway at that point relaunching the app would be instantaneous.

[ldemailly]

I'll wait for feedback to confirm what you're seeing on this point.

My use case at the time was to get the latest/most recent in order to file a bug / confirming the bug is still there in the latest release. or in general not install a 3 days old update when there is a 1 day old one. So yes concerned about getting something stale, I did also click "check for updates" in the menu just after the first download+install+restart cycle... and ... got a 2nd one (back to back)

ghostty removed your own dialogs and replaced them with their own buttons (I wish @mitchellh would take ownership of the issue and describe exactly how he is using your code instead of me playing telephone game)

What I see is

so nothing has been download yet, yet when I do click I wish it would say "well there is an even newer one"

So it's not downloaded yet but when I click it may (and does if a weekend has passed for instance) download something already outdated

[ldemailly]

(maybe despite showing "downloading" when clicked, it's actually already downloading, I don't know as I'm just a user)

[mitchellh]

(I wish @mitchellh would take ownership of the issue and describe exactly how he is using your code instead of me playing telephone game)

I’m not playing telephone. I simply don’t care about this issue. Feel free to chase it down if you want. I just don’t want to.

Thanks @zorgiepoo for maintaining sparkle it’s excellent.

[ldemailly]

ps:

and anyway at that point relaunching the app would be instantaneous.

restarting a terminal emulator is disruptive to the ongoing windows state so even if instantaneous, doing it once, then doing it all over again (check+download+install+restart cycle) is not good UX - also my network is fast yet still not a good thing to redownload

[zorgiepoo]

That comment was for the state when the update was already downloaded and the installation had already been initiated, which was not your case.

[zorgiepoo]

Moving to discussion. I think Ghostty is using a custom UI in Sparkle.

I'm guessing in your screenshot if you click "Later" and then check for updates again, it will show the newest update. However I am not sure, depends on how that's implemented.

[ldemailly]

not to beat a dead horse but my UX goal is to get the most recent release in 1 go, not to click "later" just in case there might be a newer one; at least ideally though I suppose I could learn that footgun workaround (click later than immediately click "check for updates" again?)

[zorgiepoo]

Yeah it's a two step workaround if you care to check if a newer version is available.

Forcing a state change when the user clicks to check for updates (i.e dismissing the update session and starting a new one) may be awkward to do in Sparkle's current model. (For the standard UI it brings an update back in focus).

Some apps do another update check when they click a button saying an update is available, but I personally don't like being delayed by a network request to get info about an update the app already has been notified about. A part of the experience may also depend on the typical cadence interval of releases.

[ldemailly]

Makes sense that for rare updates it's fine as is. But this update channel (ghostty tip) has at least daily when not more often updates

[mitchellh]

@zorgiepoo I tried to incorporate your suggested change and I noticed that you can't dismiss the update state and immediately start an update check in the same loop tick, so I'm doing this somewhat fragile asyncAfter 100ms instead. Perhaps an improvement here could be that if we dismiss (via a reply) a state, we can immediately start checking for updates again?

See diff here: ghostty-org/ghostty#9203

[zorgiepoo]

I am assuming you are replying with SPUUserUpdateChoiceDismiss.

For your approach to do it without the asyncAfter hack you'd have to implement -[SPUUpdaterDelegate updater: didFinishUpdateCycleForUpdateCheck:error:] and call checkForUpdates in there (the error should be nil fyi). That may require some bookkeeping so you only trigger the update check at the end of the cycle if you initiated a "re-check operation" in that same cycle beforehand.

Also I would only do this if the state.stage == SPUUserUpdateStageNotDownloaded
If the update has already been downloaded or started installing, and you dismiss the user driver, Sparkle just forwards that update to the next cycle.

[mitchellh]

Another improvement that would be nice related to this is the ability via SPUUpdater to check for an update manually outside of the driver lifecycle. This would allow Ghostty with our custom UI to check for an update prior to install for example and allow us to notify the user they're going to install something outdated.

I read through the SPUUpdater implementation and I don't see an obvious way for a caller to do this today...