Onova.Publisher - Like Squirrel but Simpler™

It has been years since Squirrel.Windows had been deprecated, without a modern replacement. This project aims to provide the basic functionality of Squirrel.Windows. We build upon the Onova update library, which provides seamless update process for your application. One of Onova's upsides is the unawareness of how the application has been installed. However, to make the process of installing and updating as intuitive as possible, it is useful to make them depend on each other.

Introduction

Onova.Publisher is a tool that allows you to create new packages directly from Visual Studio Package Manager Console.
The package will be targeted for usage by WebPackageResolver.
Publisher also takes care of creating the manifest file, which is consumed by the updater.

The most important part is the installer - in comparison to Squirrel, which packed the latest version of your application into the installer itself, Onova.Publisher packs only the information necessary to download the latest version from your deployment server. This type of installer is also known as a web installer. The major upsides are that the installer is small and you don't need to update it with your app.

Like Squirrel, Onova.Publisher builds an installer which will install your application to the local appdata folder, without needing admin privileges.

Usage

The only requirement for Onova.Publisher to work is that your project targets .NET 5+.

Let us assume you have built and dotnet published your app into the \publish folder of your solution. Select your startup project as the default project in the Package Manager Console.

PM> Onova.Publisher -h
Onova.Publisher
  Publishes your application for Onova.

Usage:
  Onova.Publisher [options]

Options:
  -n, --name <name>             Your application's name (name of executable without extension). Maximum 31 characters.
  -v, --version <version>       Version in format major.minor[.build[.revision]].
  -u, --url <url>               URL to web where the manifest resides. Maximum 1023 characters.
  -i, --in, --target <target>   Folder which will get packed into a zip.
  -o, --out, --output <output>  Folder which will contain the updated manifest file, zip and installer. [default: .\OnovaPublish]
  --no-releasenotes, --no-rn    Disables generation of an empty release note (.rn) file.
  -s, --sign <sign>             Sign AppName.exe/.dll files and the installer. This field accepts SignTool parameters.
  -?, -h, --help                Show help and usage information

After reading the tool's help, let's try publishing our DummyApp version 1.2.3 to our web server at https://dummy.com/files/.

PM> Onova.Publisher --name DummyApp --version 1.2.3 --url https://dummy.com/files/ --target publish\

This should produce the following output:

Successfully published DummyApp version 1.2.3 into DummyApp-1.2.3.zip.

If we check our solution folder, we can see a new folder called OnovaPublish. The contents of the folder are following:

    MANIFEST
    DummyApp-1.2.3.zip
    DummyApp-1.2.3.rn
    websetup.exe

The MANIFEST file will contain one line, 1.2.3 DummyApp-1.2.3.zip. This file is precisely formatted for WebPackageResolver.

The .rn file is an empty text file, in which you can add release notes for your release. For more information, check out Onova.ReleaseNotes.

You can now upload the files to the desired location.

Continuing, we will assume you have implemented the updating in your application as:

using (var mgr = new UpdateManager(new WebPackageResolver("https://dummy.com/files/MANIFEST"), new ZipPackageExtractor()))
{
  var result = await mgr.CheckForUpdatesAsync();
  ...
}

You can try creating another version, by running a similar command:

PM> Onova.Publisher --name DummyApp --version 1.3.0 --url https://dummy.com/files/ --target publish\

Now, you should just need to upload the new zip file and update the latest MANIFEST entry. (unless a new version of the publisher had come out in the meantime, in which case an update for the installer may be required)

After uploading the files, let's try downloading and running the webinstaller.exe of our application. The installer is written in C++ and statically linked for x86, compiled with MSVC, which means it should run on any reasonable Windows installation. Running the installer will greet us with a console window with the following contents:

Welcome to DummyApp web install
Downloading the latest version...
Installing version 1.3.0...
The app was sucessfully installed.
Press any key to continue . . .

The installer did the following:

Checked the manifest in the URL specified during publishing
Parsed the manifest and selected the latest entry
Downloaded the latest zip to temp directory
Unpacked the zip to %localappdata%\DummyApp\oapp\
Created link to the start menu
Registered the app in the Windows Registry
Copied an uninstaller to %localappdata%\DummyApp\uninstall.exe

Of course, if anything during the process went wrong, the installer would output an error message in the console. Currently, the installed app will not be started after the installation.

If you want to uninstall the application, you can use the standard Windows uninstall procedure using Settings, or you can directly execute the uninstall.exe in the application base directory. Also, in comparison with Squirrel, your application will have an icon visible in the installed programs menu, and the uninstaller leaves no installed files behind.

Code signing

If you don't want to sign your app by yourself, you can use Onova.Publisher with the --sign option. This option requires parameters that get passed to the bundled SignTool. Onova.Publisher will sign only valid executable files (exe, dll) with your application's name, and the generated installer. Example:

PM> Onova.Publisher --name DummyApp --version 1.3.0 --url https://dummy.com/files/ --target publish\ --sign "/f cert.pfx /p passwd123 /tr http://timestamp.digicert.com"

Missing (planned) features

Missing (not planned) features

Bigger customization eg. icons, custom UI
Dedicated non-web installer
Other OS support or backporting to older .NET versions
Bootstrapping

Known issues

No wiki
No tests
App name allows only ANSI encoding
MANIFEST rebuilding sorts alphabetically, not semantically

Contributions

I am open to suggestions, PRs, bug reports. Any contribution is welcome.

Licensing

The project uses following licensed works:

zip_file.hpp - miniz_cpp
WinReg.hpp - Giovanni Dicanio, WinReg
cpr

My provided code is licensed under the MIT license.

dady8889/Onova.Publisher