I need an updater for my macOS JVM app. Tried Hydraulic Conveyor so far following their <tutorial>,...

# compose-desktop

[Stefan Oltmann]

I need an updater for my macOS JVM app.

Tried Hydraulic Conveyor so far following their tutorial, but that just doesn't work. The sample app won't update.

What other options do I have? I'm looking for tools similar to Conveyor.

[Sebastian Kürten]

when you say "updater", what do you mean? some in-app functionality to upgrade your app?

[Stefan Oltmann]

Something that can replace my old DMG with a new one.

I figured out that many "traditional" ways like jDeploy won't work, because if the installation changes it's files I lose notarization.

[Stefan Oltmann]

The concept Conveyor is following by replacing the whole thing seems to be the right one. So I'm looking for something like that, but actually working.

[Alexander Maryanovsky]

The author of conveyor hangs around here. He can probably help. @mikehearn

[mikehearn]

First report we've heard like that. I can help debug with you, if you like. Please be aware that by default on macOS, Sparkle won't check for updates on first run or for an hour or so after install (iirc). This is deliberate, to avoid immediately asking the user to update if they downloaded an old version. That's in app.updates = background mode (the default). In aggressive mode it should check and update on every launch.

[mikehearn]

If you look in <http://Console.app|Console.app> then you may see logs explaining what it's doing and why.

[Stefan Oltmann]

The sample project from the tutorial is in aggressive mode.

I got a version 2.0 app installed, the update site is at version 3.0 - but it doesn't attempt to update.

[mikehearn]

OK, could you look at the Console app and then (re)start the app, there should now be some logs for the newly started process that print out what it's doing and why it's not updating.

[Stefan Oltmann]

What is the Console app?

[mikehearn]

The macOS log viewer app that comes with the OS.

[mikehearn]

Also, just to double check, you are uploading all the generated files to the update site, yes? Either using make copied-site or by copying the output directory from make site? If you skip some files it may break things.

[Stefan Oltmann]

I use "make site" and "npx serve output" like the tutorial says

[Stefan Oltmann]

I don't see anything special in the Console app.
But it's a lot of stuff.

For what should I look out for? What is a good filter?

[mikehearn]

You should be able to find stuff from your app using the "Process" column. Then you can right click it and select "Show Process 'foo'" to zoom in on only that app

[Stefan Oltmann]

What I notice is that the mac app on start does not connect to the webserver. The "npx serve" terminal window shows a live access log.

[Stefan Oltmann]

I'm on a M1 machine running macOS 14.0.
I tried Conveyor 11.4 following the tutorial.
The apps for Intel & M1 macOS installed from the download page won't update after changing version number, building it with Gradle and refreshing the "output"-folder using "make site".

[mikehearn]

Could you double check that the app.updates key is set to aggressive in your config? I just tried generating the compose sample and noticed it's missing, although the tutorial says it's there by default. I wonder if that's the problem.

[mikehearn]

I just tried with the generated Compose sample, on an Intel Mac running 14.0 and the update worked (albeit the default is background mode, but the update prompt appeared anyway). So, something is different.

[mikehearn]

In <http://Console.app|Console.app>, type the name of your program in the search field, that should help narrow down the logs

[mikehearn]

Alternatively search for dev.hydraulic.conveyor (seems that background logging got way noisier in sonoma)

[Stefan Oltmann]

Could you double check that the app.updates key is set to aggressive in your config? I just tried generating the compose sample and noticed it's missing, although the tutorial says it's there by default. I wonder if that's the problem.

Yes, that was the problem. Now it works. Thank you.

[mikehearn]

Sorry about that, from checking it seems every template except Compose had it in there. Whoops. We'll get that fixed.

[Stefan Oltmann]

👍

[Michael Paus]

How does this aggressive app.updates behave if you application is only self-signed? Will it still work?

[mikehearn]

Yes