[RadiozRadioz]

> file transfers. And I’m supposed to not touch files?

I'm pretty sure you know what I meant, it's obvious from context. System program files. The files that are managed by your user's package manager (and by extension their IT department)

[klabb3]

There isn’t a package manager in many cases: windows store requires a MS account. macOS app store nerfs apps by sandbox restrictions. Linux has so many flavors of package managers it’s death by 1000 paper cuts. None of the major bundlers like flutter, electron and tauri support all these package managers and/or app stores. Let alone running the infrastructure for it.

Which leaves you with self-updaters. I definitely agree ideally it shouldn’t be the applications job to update itself. But we don’t live in that world atm. At the very least you need to check for updates and EOL circuit breakers for apps that aren’t forever- local only apps. Which is not a niche use-case even if local-first infra was mature and widely adopted, which it very much isn’t.

Anyway, my app works without internet, pulls no business logic at runtime (live updates) and it uses e2ee for privacy. That’s way more than the average ad-funded bait-and-switch ware that plague the majority of commercial software today. I wish I didn’t have to worry about updates, but the path to less worries and healthy ecosystem is not to build bug-free forever-software on top of a constantly moving substrate provided largely by corporations with multiple orders of magnitude more funding than the average software development company.

[pl4nty]

> windows store requires a MS account

they avoid mentioning it, but the Microsoft managed package format (MSIX) works just fine without the Microsoft Store. create an App Installer manifest, stick it on a website, and get semver-d differential updates across multiple architectures for free: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/app-installer...

msft have woefully underinvested in the ecosystem and docs though. I wish they'd fund me or others to contribute on the OSS side - electron could be far simpler and more secure with batteries-included MSIX

[klabb3]

That's interesting and unexpected. How does the update check, notification & install process work?

EDIT: I think your link answered some of these questions. I’m on .msi myself so can’t benefit from it yet anyway.. basically these things need to be managed by the app bundlers like electron & tauri otherwise we’re asking for trouble. I think..