Filed under: Freeware, Developer
Cocoa developer time-saver: SparkleZip 1.1
Sparkle is an open-source module for Cocoa that allows developers to add that cool "Check for Updates" and auto-install feature with relative ease; it's used by some of our favorite applications. If you already knew that, then you might be part of the small but important group of people who would be interested in SparkleZip.
SparkleZip is a free utility with a very self-explanatory name. Drag your application onto its icon and it will read your CFBundleVersion and generate a properly named zip file, ready for appcasting. It's a few seconds shaved off of release time and a great way to prevent mishaps, given that the current version of Sparkle is not overly forgiving once an appcast is published. Meanwhile, those seconds you just saved can go towards working on your next release which, by the way, we heard was going to be awesome.
Update: Due to an editing error, the post originally implied that TextMate is a Sparkle-enabled application. Although it's listed among the apps on the Sparkle wiki, Allan has said that he does not use Sparkle to handle TextMate updates. Our apologies for the mixup.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jonas Witt said 6:18AM on 12-30-2007
TextMate using Sparkle would be news to me - how did you find out?
SparkleZip is definitely something to have in your XCode build chain, though. If you'd also like free Sparkle-compliant appcasts, register your app with http://osx.iusethis.com/ and set http://osx.iusethis.com/appcast/ as your SUFeedURL. And don't forget to tell iusethis about your new version. :-)
Reply
Jonas Witt said 6:22AM on 12-30-2007
Actually, I had "appname" in angle brackets at the end of the feed URL. Check out http://osx.iusethis.com/about/export for more info.
Michael Rose said 11:12AM on 12-30-2007
Hey Jonas --
Brett is not to blame for the TextMate/Sparkle mixup, that was all me. I wanted to link in some apps that use Sparkle to illustrate its utility for our non-dev readers, and I put in an app that I THOUGHT used Sparkle, but sadly I was out of date. :-(
As noted in the update to the post, I'm not the only one who thinks TextMate uses Sparkle -- Andy's wiki lists it as one of the enabled apps.
Andy Matuschak said 12:21PM on 12-30-2007
Whoa, I don't know why TextMate's on the wiki. It's what inspired me to write Sparkle in the first place—I certainly knew it had its own mechanism. Ah, well. I removed it. Sorry for the mix-up, guys.
Reply
Michael Rose said 12:57PM on 12-30-2007
I think we've all learned something today...
Thanks Andy for Sparkle, thanks Allan for TextMate, and thanks Brett for clearing up the fog of code.