DISQUS

Kunal.Kundaje.net: How software updates should work (Part 2)…

  • Geoff · 2 years ago
    Isn't Ubuntu able to do this because it builds and packages all the apps into their own universal package repository or something?

    Would be nice to have third-party software updates provided through the OS update system, myself and Jan-Willem were talking about this a while ago wrt Apple Software Update (ASU) and how cool it would be if third-party developers could register an app with ASU either on installation or directly with Apple. Then the ASU program would also check for updates to your installed third-party applications.

    This would also be really good for some development houses if it was registered directly with the OS vendor as then they might be able to akamize it or something thereby taking the bandwidth loading off the developer.

    PS shouldn't firefox be updating itself instead of cheating and letting something else do it

    *runs*
  • Bert JW Regeer · 2 years ago
    FireFox lets you know a new version is available, but won't download a new version if the OS it is running on is not one of the many pre-packaged software compiles they have available.

    A repository of apps is great, problem is they get outdated too fast. That is why the ports tree is nice, now it is as simple as updating an Makefile, no need to have someone else pre-compile the software, who may want a different flag set than you.

    What Geoff said is really something I hope Apple will implement within their OS, as that would be one of the coolest features ever, hell Steve Jobs could show it off on stage, and get all the Linux people mad since their package manager has been doing it all along :P (Ignoring the fact that this is from a third party developers site and that Apple is not hosting the software in a repo :P)