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I use electron-builder to build my app and succeed to build the first version which contains three outputs: foosetup.exe, foo-0.0.1-full.nupkg and RELEASES.Now I want to implement the auto-update and I have deployed a back-end service by using electron-release-server.

The auto-update need to set a feedURL which will be used to fetch updates,but the problem is that I don't know what the updates exactly means?Is it the foo-0.0.1-full.nupkg or the foo-0.0.1-delta.nupkg or another file?

The second problem is that I don't know how to create the delta file.I can just find an option remoteReleases in electron-builder which is a URL to your existing updates.If given,these will be downloaded to create delta file.But what's the URL exactly means?I find a example i which "remoteRelease": "https://github.com/user/repo"，and it creates some releases and uploads many extra files for each release such as foosetup.exe, foo-xx-full-nupkg, RELEASES.I guess electron-builder will fetch the ${remoteReleases/release/download/some-version/xxx} to download file and then diff the two file to create delta file,but I can't upload RELEASES when I create release on github,it reports that they don't support this file type. Is there anyone can help?There're to few docs to follow for a beginer

caibirdme
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  • I'm pretty much in the same boat here. There seems to be no doc on where `remoteReleases` should point to. The root? On `releases`? ... – m02ph3u5 Jun 16 '16 at 09:01

2 Answers2

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For electron-release-server please take a look at the docs.

The delta-file will be create automatically if you use electron-builder. But in order for this to work remoteReleases must be set to a valid (and reachable) URL plus there must at least an empty file called RELEASES. So for the very first build just create an empty file and call it RELEASES.

On every future build there will be a RELEASES file created for you. Throw all the generated files in your release server (overwrite existing RELEASES) and it'll be fine.

Attention: For electron-release-server you do not need the RELEASES generated by electron-builder. electron-release-server will create one by itself.

To get started with auto-updates I'd recommend that you set up a dead-simple release-server locally. I.e.:

  • Create a directory and throw an empty file RELEASES in there.
  • Then start a simple webserver pointing at that directory (e. g. cd into/your/dir && php -S 0.0.0.0:80).
  • Edit your package.json: "remoteRelease": "http://localhost"
  • Then build your installer: npm run dist It should successfully build and you should see some GET requests on your local server.
  • Take the generated files and stuff them into the directory you created.
  • Now increment your version and start another build: npm run dist You should see some GET requests again and there should be an addition delta-file being created.
  • Again stuff all those things into the directory (or for electron-release-server upload the assets .nupkg, .exe and delta into a new release).

Hope that helps. Feel free to comment if something is unclear.

m02ph3u5
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Check out this sample app that I have created https://github.com/electron-delta/electron-sample-app

It uses two npm packages.

  1. @electron-delta/builder
  2. @electron-delta/updater

More details https://github.com/electron-delta/electron-delta#installation

Sandeep Acharya
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