FR: Support compiling application bundles that compose can use to auto-update applications

[ScottPierce]

There are several external libraries that allow Java applications to do auto-update with bundles (i.e. https://github.com/update4j/update4j ), but it seems that it's very difficult to use these currently with Compose in order to achieve the auto-updating functionality.

After messing around with the various options, it seems like the best solution is to have the Compose team provide something that would allow the compose desktop applications to update themselves when provided with a file bundle, or something of the sort.

[akurasov]

it seems that it's very difficult to use these currently with Compose

what are the difficulties?

[ScottPierce]

The owner of update4j proposed a solution last night. You can find the conversation here - update4j/update4j#149

I got a bit lost in the update4j documentation but I'll try implementing the proposed solution this weekend.

Can someone comment on the name changes for the jars? i.e. animation-core-desktop-1.0.0-alpha2-779ffac333be01750e1babf4c38565e.jar What is the hash that's added to the end of the jar name?

[sonder-joker]

I also foucus on it. I'm develop a application can install plugin.

[sonder-joker]

The owner of update4j proposed a solution last night. You can find the conversation here - update4j/update4j#149

I got a bit lost in the update4j documentation but I'll try implementing the proposed solution this weekend.

Can someone comment on the name changes for the jars? i.e. animation-core-desktop-1.0.0-alpha2-779ffac333be01750e1babf4c38565e.jar What is the hash that's added to the end of the jar name?

I found it generate by this
https://github.com/JetBrains/compose-jb/blob/1561b2736f1e62ad0d61214e8a96342fb841f0a6/gradle-plugins/compose/src/main/kotlin/org/jetbrains/compose/desktop/application/internal/files/fileUtils.kt#L15

[ScottPierce]

I think this should be something that the gradle plugin provides to us. Some thoughts I wrote down in slack:

It’s lots of simple problems to solve that are complex when combined together I think. Lots of smaller questions come up:

• How does the app hook in and provide its own custom update UI?
• How do you do this on windows?
• How do you allow not only for the classes to be updated, but the JVM as well?

The solution I’ve played around with in my head is to download all the changed files from the previous version, and then downloading a small Kotlin Native executable for the specific platform, and then running that native executable, killing the current process, having the native executable swap out all the files, and then restarting the application.

It’s also theoretically possible though to live update the application without even killing the process if you are only updating classes. I’ve tried this though, and it’s much more complicated than I’d hoped.

[okushnikov]

Please check the following ticket on YouTrack for follow-ups to this issue. GitHub issues will be closed in the coming weeks.