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Example: Step by step walkthrough with `appimageupdatetool`
This is a step by step walkthrough about the usage of appimageupdatetool. That tool is for the command line only. (It has a sibling tool though which has a graphical user interface, called AppImageUpdate.) Of course it also ships as an AppImage! However, when I downloaded it, I immediately renamed it from appimageupdatetool-185-1c72f3b-x86_64.AppImage to a shorter name I prefer for typing in the terminal, aiut.
wget https://github.com/AppImage/AppImageUpdate/releases/download/continuous/appimageupdatetool-185-1c72f3b-x86_64.AppImage -O ~/bin/aiut
chmod +x ~/bin/aiut # Make it executable !
In my following protocol, I captured as much details as possible -- so be patient...
To not confuse readers too much about my shorthand naming of the tool, I also created a symlink named appimageupdatetool, which I will use for this walkthrough:
ln -s aiut ~/bin/appimageupdatetool
If you paid close attention, you'll already start to draw two conclusions:
- AppImages do not seem to require the use of the .AppImage filename suffix!
- AppImages seem to work even when called via symbolic links!
Let's see.
First, get an overview of the tool:
$> appimageupdatetool -h
/tmp/.mount_aiktbOwQ9Wq/usr/bin/appimageupdatetool {OPTIONS} [path]
AppImage companion tool taking care of updates for the commandline.
OPTIONS:
-h, --help
-V, --version Display version and exit.
-d, --describe Parse and describe AppImage and its
update information and exit.
-j, --check-for-update Check for update. Exits with code 1 if
changes are available, 0 if there are
not,other non-zero code in case of
errors.
-O, --overwrite Overwrite existing file. If not
specified, a new file will be created,
and the old one will remain untouched.
-r, --remove-old Remove old AppImage after successful
update
--self-update
path path to AppImage
"--" can be used to terminate flag options and force all following
arguments to be treated as positional options
Looking at the info appimageupdatetool could provide, the -j and -d flags look promising:
-d, --describe Parse and describe AppImage and its
update information and exit.
-j, --check-for-update Check for update. Exits with code 1 if
changes are available, 0 if there are
not,other non-zero code in case of
errors.
These help hints suggest (to me at least), that -j is meant for rather silent runs, whereas -d is verbose.
However, both are "verbose". In a way that is a bit inconsistent...
To show how AppImage updates work, I used zsync2-105-7fd1caa-x86_64.AppImage to test (knowing that zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage{,.zsync} are already available on their respective GitHub release page and should serve as update seeds). Then I ran these two commands:
$> appimageupdatetool -d zsync2-105-7fd1caa-x86_64.AppImage 1>out_d 2>err_d ; echo $?
0
$> appimageupdatetool -j zsync2-105-7fd1caa-x86_64.AppImage 1>out_d 2>err_d ; echo $?
1
Now for the outputs of the two commands. I prepend ERR: and OUT: to each line to show which lines go out which channel.
Param -d:
ERR: Fetching release information for tag "continuous" from GitHub API.
ERR:
OUT: Parsing file: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-105-7fd1caa-x86_64.AppImage
OUT: AppImage type: 2
OUT: Raw update information: gh-releases-zsync|TheAssassin|zsync2|continuous|zsync2-*x86_64.AppImage.zsync
OUT: Update information type: ZSync via GitHub Releases
OUT: Assembled ZSync URL: https://github.com/AppImage/zsync2/releases/download/continuous/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage.zsync
Param -j: (out_j is empty)
ERR: Fetching release information for tag "continuous" from GitHub API.
Now run an update process:
$> time appimageupdatetool ~/AppImages/zsync2-105-7fd1caa-x86_64.AppImage ; echo $?
Checking for updates...
Fetching release information for tag "continuous" from GitHub API.
... done!
Starting update...
Fetching release information for tag "continuous" from GitHub API.
0% done
Updating from GitHub Releases via ZSync
0% done
zsync2: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage found, using as seed file
zsync2: Target file: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage
zsync2: Reading seed file: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-105-7fd1caa-x86_64.AppImage
0.59778% done (0.01 of 2.29 MiB)...
zsync2: Reading seed file: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage
zsync2: Usable data from seed files: 100.000000%
zsync2: Renaming temp file
zsync2: Fetching remaining blocks
zsync2: Verifying downloaded file
zsync2: checksum matches OK
zsync2: used 2398208 local, fetched 0
100.00% done (2.29 of 2.29 MiB)...
Update successful. New file created: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage
real 0m4.819s
user 0m0.216s
sys 0m0.052s
0
Less than 5 seconds!
But of course, this "fast" run had a reason, as you can easily see: Yes, I had zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage already locally available -- hence the four lines:
"zsync2: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage found, using as seed file",
"zsync2: Reading seed file: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage",
"zsync2: Usable data from seed files: 100.000000%" and
"zsync2: used 2398208 local, fetched 0".
Why did I do this? I wanted to see if I could fool the tool and trick it into running an update which was very obviously not necessary. But the tool isn't THAT stupid...
Last I remove the existing, most up to date zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage.
$> rm -rf zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage
We should now see the update process when it really has to do some heavy lifting. This last piece of the walkthrough is what you normally do for any existing AppImage you have. The initial checks, run with -j and -d, were only out of pure curiosity. The first update run (while the requested newest version was already present) was additional curiosity....
The real update is simpler, faster and more efficient. It takes less than half a minute:
$> time appimageupdatetool ~/AppImages/zsync2-105-7fd1caa-x86_64.AppImage ; echo $?
Checking for updates...
Fetching release information for tag "continuous" from GitHub API.
... done!
Starting update...
Fetching release information for tag "continuous" from GitHub API.
0% done
Updating from GitHub Releases via ZSync
0% done
zsync2: Target file: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage
zsync2: Reading seed file: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-105-7fd1caa-x86_64.AppImage
zsync2: Usable data from seed files: 48.761742%
zsync2: Renaming temp file
zsync2: Fetching remaining blocks
48.76% done (1.11 of 2.29 MiB)...
zsync2: Downloading from https://github-production-release-asset-2e65be.s3.amazonaws.com/105511842/13b63fa8-f04c-11e7-9b2d-9124208a76e2?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWNJYAX4CSVEH53A%2F20180112%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20180112T024939Z&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Signature=c251c07d3fe9e38fbae195c84ea8ad8e176006ebe38d0fe14e2bab1710c72a79&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&actor_id=0&response-content-disposition=attachment%3B%20filename%3Dzsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage&response-content-type=application%2Foctet-stream
99.57% done (2.28 of 2.29 MiB)...
zsync2: Verifying downloaded file
zsync2: checksum matches OK
zsync2: used 1169408 local, fetched 1228208
100.00% done (2.29 of 2.29 MiB)...
Update successful. New file created: /home/kp/AppImages/zsync2-106-817978a-x86_64.AppImage
real 0m22.792s
user 0m0.276s
sys 0m0.104s
0
AppImageUpdate -- the best ever way to update software!