Auto updater for app image

[jnweiger]

Seen in testpilotcloud-2.9.0-beta1.4914.AppImage

This suggestion does not work. Appimages cannot e updated with the system's update tool.

Expected behaviour:

• "... Please download the new appimage manually" (if possible mention the URL!) or
• best: have a builtin updater in the appimage

[fmoc]

I think the issue should refer to "self-updating", not "auto-updating". We want to embed some kind of updater that can use the update server information.

To update AppImages, there is AppImageUpdate, which updates AppImages using the zsync algorithm. Contrary to other solutions, one does not have to build diff files. Instead, you have to publish a .zsync file. This file contains information on where to find the entire new AppImage, as well as block hash sums. AppImageUpdate generates those hash sums locally as well, and can then compare the hashes, download all the blocks that changed, copy the blocks that have not changed from the existing file, and thus create a new file next to the old while downloading only the bits that truly changed.

This seems to work quite well, given the way AppImages are built. As long as files have not changed, they should not be downloaded, as the AppImage payload format, squashfs, stores them the exactly same way.

By default, AppImageUpdate contains the location of the .zsync file in the ELF executable header. This information is supposed to be static. This means that, if we want to offer AppImageUpdate, we have to embed such a URL that points to a file on our servers. This URL would have to be static. We could not make it read the information from our update server API. More information is available in the AppImage specification draft.

To integrate self-update capabilities, we could integrate AppImageUpdate directly. It provides a Qt UI that can be bundled into other tools. There is also a reimplementation in pure Qt called QAppImageUpdate, which seems to be incomplete (e.g., it is missing signature validation, which is provided by AppImageUpdate). Both solutions at the moment mandate the use of the update information.

Whichever implementation we pick to bundle with our client, we need to discuss whether we want to use the update information system (which basically eliminates the need for using our own update servers, because update checks etc. can be done directly using the AppImageUpdate algorithms), or whether we want to contribute to either solution to be able to pass our own .zsync URL upon construction.

As the upstream AppImageUpdate supports signature validation, and we recently implemented signing (see #8875), I would rather use this solution.

[fmoc]

Closed by #9376.

[bishwasojha]

In Client for Updates, there is following text in Updates heading

• Update status is unknown: Did not check for new updates.

When click on this, nothing happens

Screenshot

ownCloud version

ownCloud 3.1.0.9010-daily20221105 [f06653](https://github.com/owncloud/client/commit/f06653068b84316e2e979537c66970b70b087ecd)
Libraries Qt 5.15.5, OpenSSL 1.1.1q 5 Jul 2022
Using virtual files plugin: suffix
ubuntu-5.15.0-52-generic

[fmoc]

The production update server has not been updated yet. It will be updated with the final release of 3.0.0.

[individual-it]

@fmoc so this cannot really be tested, I will put this int no test needed
CC @HanaGemela

[michaelstingl]

With beta1 and rc's , production update server should be updated, but only for testpilotcloud builds. Vanilla updates after final release. But QA team has it's own updater server, to tests independently from the production one.

[fmoc]

@individual-it testpilotcloud should work indeed. And you can set up your own update server, too, if you like to. I use https://github.com/fmoc/minimal-update-server/.

Edit: looks like @michaelstingl was faster.

Edit 2: To use a different update server, you need to set OCC_UPDATE_URL as explained minimal-update-server's README.

[saw-jan]

Update is there. Update pops up at the startup as well

[saw-jan]

There is no update available from RC2 to RC3

Tested on Testpilotcloud (rc2) in ubuntu22.04 and windows 10

CC @TheOneRing @fmoc

[TheOneRing]

rc3 was not yet pushed to the updater

[saw-jan]

rc3 was not yet pushed to the updater

It works now!