Wax
Squirrel
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Wax | Squirrel | |
---|---|---|
0 | 37 | |
219 | 7,128 | |
- | 1.0% | |
1.8 | 6.0 | |
over 2 years ago | 2 months ago | |
C# | C++ | |
MIT License | MIT License |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Wax
We haven't tracked posts mentioning Wax yet.
Tracking mentions began in Dec 2020.
Squirrel
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ClickOnce
I never had much luck with ClickOnce, so I was using Squirrel.Windows. I've recently switched to the Clowd.Squirrel fork, since I needed support for AzureSignTool in the build process.
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Any sufficiently advanced uninstaller is indistinguishable from malware
As soon as Office 2007 didn't use MSI the format was doomed.
I assume the Here in NIH refers to an individual team, not MS as a whole.
Teams is entirely NIH https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows for updates to the Electron app.
I would use winget, but MS made it weirdly hard to run as a script on multiple computers, it installs per user, because... who knows.
So still using chocolatey
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In the year 2023, what is the best way to deploy/distribute a WPF Application?
Originally, we used to use Squirrel.Windows for our internal applications but we had a few issues with it before we finally dropped it.
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WinForms Application Updater
The most viable option with the path of least resistance would be Squirrel.Windows as it is both and installer and updater but has some caveats (SemVer pattern must be followed).
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Compose Multiplatform 1.2 Is Out: New Mouse and Keyboard APIs, ProGuard Support, Online Updates
Electron does have auto-update built in (Squirrel), but it comes with severe non-price related caveats. Squirrel is only intermittently maintained and goes through long periods in which the different versions are abandoned (see for Windows, macOS). People have requested a switch to Sparkle on macOS, which is what Conveyor uses, but with no response. There's also the issue that their update solutions require interactive servers but the only free one is restricted to open source projects, and isn't itself open source. The Electron website points you towards a variety of projects if you want to run your own server but all of them are (again) abandoned for years.
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What is currently a good way to provide an installer for WPF application?
We replaced clickonce with https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows and are generally happy with the choice
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Don't Use RAR
You can have that with updates using Squirrel; https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows.
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The best Windows installer you've never heard of: Clowd.Squirrel
This is a modern offshoot of the original Squirrel, which is focusing on .NET Framework only and is no longer in active development. Clowd.Squirrel was forked to add support for .NET 5/6. It also has a bunch of other handy features like a progress bar on the install splash screen.
- Seeking Deployment Advice
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Automating Clickonce deployment for .net 5.0 Winforms. Just went through scripting my deploy with power shell and wrote it up.
But the command line tooling for deploying separate channels (e.g., dev/test/prod) is really poor and in 2021 this is table stakes. Projects like squirrel have been spun up to get around this.
What are some alternatives?
AutoUpdater.NET - AutoUpdater.NET is a class library that allows .NET developers to easily add auto update functionality to their classic desktop application projects.
Wix Toolset
Chocolatey - Chocolatey - the package manager for Windows
Clowd.Squirrel - Quick and easy installer and automatic updates for cross-platform dotnet applications
NetSparkle - NetSparkle is a C# cross-platform software update framework for .NET developers compatible with .NET 4.6.2/.NET 6+, WinForms, WPF, and Avalonia; uses Ed25519 or DSA signatures! View basic usage here in the README or visit our website for code docs.
wixsharp - Framework for building a complete MSI or WiX source code by using script files written with C# syntax.
Onova - Unintrusive auto-update framework
omaha - Google Update for Windows
winsparkle - App update framework for Windows, inspired by Sparkle for macOS
dotnet-script - Run C# scripts from the .NET CLI.