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Configuring auto-update for an Electron app

This is almost really simple. I used electron/update-electron-app for it, the instructions for which are:

  • Add it to packages.json with npm i update-electron-app
  • Make sure your "repository" field in that file points to your GitHub repository
  • Use GitHub releases to release signed versions of your application
  • Add require('update-electron-app')() somewhere in your main.js

I added this... and it didn't work (#106).

Then I spotted this recipe in the manual setup instructions for the update.electronjs.org server that it uses:

const server = 'https://update.electronjs.org'
const feed = `${server}/OWNER/REPO/${process.platform}-${process.arch}/${app.getVersion()}`

I ran that in the Electron debugger, swapping in simonw/datasette-app as the OWNER/REPO and got this URL:

https://update.electronjs.org/simonw/datasette-app/darwin-x64/0.2.0

Which returned this:

No updates found (needs asset matching *{mac,darwin,osx}*.zip in public repository)

It turns out your asset filename needs to match that pattern!

I renamed the asset I was attaching to the release to Datasette-mac.app.zip and the auto-update mechanism started working instantly.

How it works

That update URL is interesting. If you hit it with the most recent version of the software (0.2.1 at time of writing) you get this:

~ % curl -i 'https://update.electronjs.org/simonw/datasette-app/darwin-x64/0.2.1'
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Server: Cowboy
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2021 03:54:47 GMT
Via: 1.1 vegur

But if you tell it you are running a previous version you get this instead:

~ % curl -i 'https://update.electronjs.org/simonw/datasette-app/darwin-x64/0.2.0'
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Cowboy
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2021 03:55:19 GMT
Content-Length: 740
Via: 1.1 vegur

{"name":"0.2.1","notes":"- Fixed bug where application would not start without a working internet connection. [#115](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/115)\r\n- The \"Debug -> Open Chromium DevTools\" menu item no longer shows an error if no windows are focused. [#113](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/113)\r\n- Fixed bug where the `datasette-leaflet` plugin could be uninstalled despite being automatically re-installed. [#118](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/118)\r\n- Time limit for facet calculations increased from 1 second to 3 seconds. [#114](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/114)","url":"https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/releases/download/0.2.1/Datasette-mac.app.zip"}

Which pretty-prints to:

{
  "name": "0.2.1",
  "notes": "- Fixed bug where application would not start without a working internet connection. [#115](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/115)\r\n- The \"Debug -> Open Chromium DevTools\" menu item no longer shows an error if no windows are focused. [#113](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/113)\r\n- Fixed bug where the `datasette-leaflet` plugin could be uninstalled despite being automatically re-installed. [#118](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/118)\r\n- Time limit for facet calculations increased from 1 second to 3 seconds. [#114](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/issues/114)",
  "url": "https://github.com/simonw/datasette-app/releases/download/0.2.1/Datasette-mac.app.zip"
}