Sparkle

Need help troubleshooting a failed update

Asked by dmesserly

Hi. The latest update for one of our apps is failing, and I haven't been able to successfully troubleshoot the problem. The update fails with "Update Error! An error occurred in retrieving update information: are you connected to the internet? Please try again later." There is no problem with the internet connection. Prior to updating the XML file with the latest version, the app was successfully updating.

Could you take a look at the XML file and see if something in here might be the source of problem?

http://marinersoftware.com/sparkle/tempitems/StoryMill.beta.xml

Thanks
Dawn

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Hofman (cmhofman) said : 		#1

Perhaps it has to do with your invalid version numbers, in particular for betas. The version numbers as used in sparkle:version should be CFBundleVersion strings, which /must/ consist of only digits and periods (see the Apple documentation on Info.plist keys). If not, Sparkle won't work properly, as well as various other features of the system and other applications (such as Launch Services, Open With... menu items, etc). For user-readable formatted version numbers you should use CFBundleShortVersionString, which corresponds to a similar sparkle attribute in the appcast. (As an aside, the Info.plist keys documentation is partly buggy, IMHO.)

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dmesserly (dawn-marinersoftware) said : 		#2

Thank you for the response, Hofman.

This would be the first time that our version numbers have caused us any trouble. Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing about the validity of the version numbering, I'm just curious as to why it would create a problem now when we have been consistent with our version numbers and haven't encountered the issue before.

I'll keep investigating. Thanks again for the follow up.

Dawn

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Best Hofman (cmhofman) said : 		#3

Probably this is not the cause of your particular problem. But I would strongly suggest you to fix your version numbering, because it /will/ lead to problems, even if you don't recognize them as such (the system expects it, not just Sparkle!).

The actual problem you see is probably due to invalid XML, my first guess is the explicit "&" in the description of version 3.2.1, you should escape it as &amp;. Suggestion: enclose the whole description in a <!CDATA[...]]> block, so you can just use HTML.

Also, the <rss> tag does not include the xmlns:sparkle="http://www.andymatuschak.org/xml-namespaces/sparkle" attribute, which is required if you want to use the appcast for other purposes (I don't think Sparkle cares too much though).

Apart from that, be aware that you're using an old version of Sparkle that has a lot of bugs, some I personally consider serious.

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dmesserly (dawn-marinersoftware) said : 		#4

Aaargh! Talk about a rookie mistake. You were totally right about the extra ampersand. Problem solved.
Thanks for the advice on the version numbers, too.
- Dawn

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dmesserly (dawn-marinersoftware) said : 		#5

Thanks Hofman, that solved my question.