I have a really weird Xamarin.Forms bug I haven't seen before: When I build and deploy to simulator or device from Visual Studio 2017 on my PC the result is not aligned with the source code. What I see is some older build.
If I build from the same branch directly with VS2017 on the Mac instead I get the expected result.
Could this be some caching issue with the Mac Build Agent? If so; is there a way to clear it to ensure it doesn't deploy older builds?
[EDIT 1]
I have taken all the usual dark-magic tricks such as removing/restoring all packages, cleaning the output folders and reboot the Mac before rebuilding the solution. I also made 100% sure I wasn't using old source code.
Kindly,
Clean the solution,
Uninstall the app on the emulator.
Close VS
Rename the OBJ folder in the project folder (same place you have the
bin folder) to OBJ.old (in case you need to restore it)
Repeat step 4 for BIN folder
Restart the VS and open open the project
REBUILD the SOLUTION - you should have BIN and OBJ created for all projects.
Done
I cleaned out my personal library in attempt to fix a Xcode behavior bug.
But now I can't see the available SDKs/schema.
I believe the SDKs are with the Xcode bundle, having just download a fresh Xcode from the App Store.
So now I only see 'device'.
How to I force Xcode to reveal the simulators?
BTW: I can see all the simulators from the SAME Xcode app via my Guest account.
So my own Xcode environment is screwed up. Is there a remedy?
Comparing the Guest to my own account, I noticed that I didn't have any simulated device.
So I did the following:
1) I copied all the installed simulated devices from my Guest account to my account.
$~/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices
2) I noticed that this wasn't enough. Xcode still could not 'see' these devices. So I rebooted in Disk Utility and did a general repair of the entire drive.
Disk Utility noticed some unmapped regions (no doubt my 'erroneous' drives) and the repair fixed it.
Now I got my simulators back.
we just started playing with jwrapper and we have couple of questions .
1)Is it possible to install the application in the same directory where we click on the installer instead of installing in APPData/Roaming folder .
2) Is it possible to delete all the data automatically once the application is closed ?
3) We are also looking for encryption and want to play around . How can we test it out?
1) Its not possible to change the install dir that JWrapper uses. The reason why is explained here under 'Why can't I change the master folder?':
http://www.jwrapper.com/faq.html
2) If you wanted it to be reliable you might need to launch another virtual app which then communicated with your app and launched an uninstall of your app bundle when your original app had completed.
When you launch your child virtual app JWrapper can handle the communications between them for you:
http://www.jwrapper.com/blog/archives/08-2013
Then when the first app goes down you can use the JWrapper APIs to uninstall the entire bundle:
http://simple-help.com/media/static/jwrapper/jwutils/JWUninstallApp.html#doUninstallOfEntireBundle(boolean)
3) You can email us for a trial license for JWCrypt. Using it is very simple, the following guide explains how (bottom of the page):
http://www.jwrapper.com/guide-jwcrypt-code-protection.html
I've updated Xcode from 4.1 to 4.2 in Mac App Store but Xcode is still 4.1.
In Mac App Store now, no update available anymore. Xcode in Mac App Store does not appear like installed application because the button is labeled as "FREE" then "INSTALL APP" not "INSTALLED" as expected. When I clicked "FREE" and then "INSTALL APP", it alerts
"We could not complete you purchase
Xcode is already installed on this computer. Choose Software Update from the Apple menu to check for available updates."
I followed the instruction but there is no available update for Xcode. I also tried to restart my computer for a few times but no effect.
Edited: There is no Install Xcode in my Applications folder as well.
Is there any suggestion? Thank you.
Let me answer my question.
In my case, instead of Applications folder, Install Xcode appears in Launchpad. So if you cannot find Install Xcode in your Application folder, take a look at your Launchpad.
If I recall correctly 4.1 was before the mac app store and they may not have built in an easy way to cleanly update between the two. You could move the 4.1 app to your desktop temporarily and see if the 4.2 install will go through and install itself, or uninstall 4.1 completely (make sure your projects are not saved within). Or also see if in the mac app store it has a check for updates not the same as Software Update.
I love applications that are able to update themselves without any effort from the user (think: Sparkle framework for Mac). Is there any code/library I can leverage to do this in a Qt application, without having to worry about the OS details?
At least for Windows, Mac and user-owned Linux binaries.
I could integrate Sparkle on the Mac version, code something for the Linux case (only for a standalone, user-owned binary; I won't mess with distribution packaging, if my program is ever packaged), and find someone to help me on the Windows side, but that's horribly painful.
It is not a complete solution, but a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) tool for creating packages for auto-updates and installing them is available at https://github.com/mendeley/Update-Installer. This tool does not deal with publishing updates or downloading them.
This was written for use with a Qt-based application but to make the update installer small, standalone and easy to build, the installer uses only standard system libraries (C++ runtime, pthreads/libz/libbz2 on Linux/Mac, Win32 API on Windows, Cocoa on Mac, GTK with fallback on Linux). This simplifies delivering updates which include new versions of Qt and other non-system libraries that your application may depend on.
Before considering this though, I would suggest:
If you are only building for two platforms, consider using standard and well-tested auto-update frameworks for those platforms - eg. Sparkle on Mac, Google's Omaha on Windows or auto-update systems built into popular install frameworks (eg. InstallShield). I haven't tried BitRock.
On Mac, the Mac App Store may be a good option. See https://bugreports.qt.io/browse/QTBUG-16549 though.
On Linux, consider creating a .deb package and a simple repository to host it. Once users have a repository set up, the system-wide software update tools will take care of checking for and installing new releases. The steps for setting up a new repository however are too complex for many new Ubuntu/Debian users. What we did, and also what Dropbox and Google have done, is to create a .deb package which sets up the repository as part of the package installation.
A few other notes on creating an updater:
On Windows Vista/7, if the application is installed system-wide (eg. in C:\Program Files\$APPNAME) your users will see a scary UAC prompt when the updater tries to obtain permissions to write to the install directory. This can be avoided either by installing to a user-writable directory (I gather that this is what Google Chrome does) or by obtaining an Authenticode certificate and using it to sign the updater binary.
On Windows Vista/7, an application .exe or DLL cannot be deleted if in use, but the updater can move the existing .exe/DLL out of the way into a temporary directory and schedule it for deletion on the next reboot.
On Ubuntu, 3rd-party repositories are disabled after distribution updates. Google works around this by creating a cron-job to re-add the repository if necessary.
Shameless plug: Fervor, a simple multiplatform (Qt-based) application autoupdater inspired by Sparkle.
Shameless plug: this a relatively old question, but I thought that it may be useful to mention a library that I created recently, which I named "QSimpleUpdater". Aside from notifying you if there's a newer version, it allows you to download the change log in any format (such as HTML or RTF) and download the updates directly from your application using a dialog.
As you may expect from a Qt project, it works on any platform supported by Qt (tested on Windows, Mac & Linux).
Links:
Website
GitHub repository
Screenshot:
Though it works a bit differently than Sparkle, BitRock InstallBuilder contains an autoupdater written in Qt that can be used independently (disclaimer, I am the original BitRock developer). It is a commercial app, but we have free licenses for open source projects.
I've developed an auto-updater library which works beautifully on Mac OS X, Linux and pretty much every Unix that allows you to unlink a file while the file is still open. The reason being that I simply extracted the downloaded package on top of the existing application. Unfortunately, because I relied on this functionality, I ran into problems on Windows as Windows does not let you unlink an open file.
The only alternative I could find is to use MoveFileEx with the replace on reboot flag, but that is awful.
However, renaming the working directory of the application works on Windows 7 and Windows XP. I haven't tried Windows Vista yet.
I have found WebUpdate to be quite useful, though it's written with the wxWidgets. But don't worry, it's a separate app which handles your updates. The steps to integrate it are pretty simple - just write two XML files and run the updater. And yes, it's cross-platform.
The advantage of it is it will automatically download and unzip/install all you required and not just provide a popup with a notification about a new version and a link to download it. Another thing you can do with it is customizable actions.
Project's main page is here, you can read the docs or take a look at the official tutorial.
The blog post Mixing Cocoa and Qt may solve the problem for the Mac platform.
You can use UpdateNode which gives you all the possibilities to update your software. It's using a cross platform Qt client and is free for Open Source!
UPDATE
Just did some further analysis on that and really like this solution:
Pros:
Free for Open Source!!! Even the client is Open Source: https://github.com/updatenode/unclient
The client is already localized in several languages
Very flexible in terms of updates. You can even update single non-binaries.
Provides additionally a way to display messages though the client.
Ready to use binaries & installer for all common Linux distributions, single Windows binary, as well as installer and a solution for Mac (which I have not tried, as I don't have a Mac)
Easy to use web service, nice statistics and update check is integrated within few minutes
Cons:
I am missing a multi-user management in the online service. Maybe they will do it in future - I will definitely suggest that in their feedback portal
The client is a GUI client only - so, you will need to shrink it down to run without a GUI frontend (maybe only necessary for people like me ;-) )
So, bottom line, as this solution is quite new, I think there is lot of potential here. I will definitely use it in my project and I am looking forward for more from them! Thumbs up!
This is an old question but there is not Squirrel in answers which is BEST SOLUTION , here is what I'm doing in qt 5.12.4 with qt quick "my qml app" you can do this in any other language
I'm doing this in windows there is mac version of squirrel too, I don't know about Linux
download nuget package explorer release
https://github.com/NuGetPackageExplorer/NuGetPackageExplorer/releases
open nuget package explorer and add this directory 'lib/net45' it doesn't matter you have a .net app or not, I did this for my qt application otherwise it won't work.
add all files into this folder specify your version in the metadata
save nupkg file
download squirrel release https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows/releases
add squirrel to windows environment path
open cmd and cd to directory of nupkg file
squirrel --releasify file_name.nupkg -> now inide releases folder, there should be setup.exe file which will install app and other files.
to create new version do 2,3,4,7,8 again if its an update it will create delta file which is only needed file to update, put this files into your service directory for example in updates folder of your website which you need to disable directory browsing in IIS , and to auto-update application you need to call Update.exe which is in parent folder of application root directory appdir/../update.exe --update http://yourserver.com/upates/ after application restart app should start with new version
you can find documentation for squirrel in https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows/blob/develop/docs/getting-started/0-overview.md and nuget package explorer here https://github.com/NuGetPackageExplorer/NuGetPackageExplorer and you can use only nuget.exe too if you don't want to use nuget package explorer which can be used for dynamic generation of versions, which can be download from https://www.nuget.org/downloads
That easy. Now you have auto-update app which will download updates from the server and auto-update app. For more info you can read documentations.
note: for iis uses https://github.com/Squirrel/OldSquirrelForWindows/issues/205
I suggest you read on plugin and how to create and use them. If your application architecture is modular and be split into different plugins. Take a look at Google Auto Update utility http://code.google.com/p/omaha/. We use this.
Thibault Cuvelier is writing a tutorial (in French) to develop an updater. I know the explanations are in French (and everyone is not understanding French), but I think this can be readable with a web translator like Google Translate. With this you will have a cross-platform updater, but you need to write it by yourself.
For what I know, the only part of the updater that is explained in the tutorial, is the file downloading part. In the case this can help you, refer to the tutorial, Un updater avec Qt.
I hope that helps.
OK, so I guess I take it as a "no (cross-platform) way". It's too bad!
I have found a solution that can be automated with built-in self-extracting patches and updates. for windows. I have started using their sdk. take a look at the massive documentation here, https://agersoftware.com/docs/ the sdk is called securesdk and comes with their app, SecureDelta sdk. does a great job on any kind of files, better results than lzma-included delta updaters