[ppafford]

Hi Dev Team,

Wanted to know if you could add the "Auto Update" feature to the NBI so we could just click to get the latest version? Just a thought...

[mechdrew]

I'm going to say great idea, but also say that I don't want it.

An auto update feature was originally included in DellEFI (precursor to NBI) but was removed after it kind of proved useless. With the software still changing drastically (meklort is totally changing the installation methods in the next version) and the fact that there is always a certain amount of people who have their installations ruined after installing a new version (usually they didn't need to update in the first place) it makes a little more sense to have the user manually update for now.

One nice feature coming in the next release is that whatever version of NBI you have installed will automatically reinstall the necessary software after a major OS update. Not exactly related, but I thought it was close enough.

Now, if you were talking like a Software Update-style mechanism, that would be even more difficult. Possible, but I assume that it would take a little processor/RAM to have an "update watcher" app running all the time.

[bmcclure937]

To address mechdrew's concerns, Sparkle Update Framework would take care of all that... which is the update engine most commonly used in Mac applications

Check out Sparkle HERE

[mechdrew]

Originally Posted by bmcclure937

To address mechdrew's concerns, Sparkle Update Framework would take care of all that... which is the update engine most commonly used in Mac applications

Check out Sparkle HERE

Actually, it was Sparkle that was used originally. I don't think it ever worked properly for DellEFI, hence one of the reasons it was abandoned.

[meklort]

The reason why sparkle never worked is because there wan't an update watcher. You had to run DellEFI before it'd check for an update which is basically pointless, because it's a run once and forget about it type of app.

NBI won't have that feature (mainly because, well, it's kind useless). Sure, I could modify the Apple updater to check with a server run by myself, but that's just not very clean. It'd work, but that has a dependency on a third party server that might not be up forever (and trust me, it'd go down plenty of times).
Anyways, as Mechdrew said, NBI will auto run after an OS update which should take care of most issues (although I'm want to make the kext patching happen at boot time, that way NBI doesn't need to run after each update...)

[ppafford]

Thanks all.
I understand the pain points as a developer myself, just wanting to know if it was a better solution for the project and the users but looks to be more of a headache than it's worth.

[ehunt123]

While Sparkle is the prevailing mechanism, google's update-engine is right up there. I've yet to see many using it beyond google's own products, but it does not lack in any way.