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fix(updater): macOS in-place update can quit the app and leave a broken bundle

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
52/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
dart
Domain
desktop, release

Research direction

Start with buildMacAppReplaceScript in lib/core/updater/installers/update_install_utils.dart and MacosSparkleInstaller.install; trace how the script is launched and how failures are reported on the next start. Add tests for script quoting and failure paths, as the issue requests. Done means pre-flight checks, rollback and cleanup work, and failures are reported without leaving the app unavailable.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

bug P1 stability

Problem

buildMacAppReplaceScript (lib/core/updater/installers/update_install_utils.dart) and MacosSparkleInstaller.install can quit the app without installing anything, or corrupt the bundle.

  • mv "$TARGET" "$TARGET.old" || true swallows failures. When the move fails (no write access to /Applications, read-only DMG volume, App Translocation after running from Downloads), cp -R "$NEW" "$TARGET" copies into the existing bundle: a nested .app, a broken seal, "damaged" from Gatekeeper.
  • With set -e, a failing cp after a successful mv aborts the script and leaves no app at $TARGET. There is no rollback from .old.
  • MacosSparkleInstaller calls exit(0) right after starting the script and never checks its result, so the user just sees the app close.
  • $TARGET.old is not removed on success; the extracted querya-update-* temp directory is never cleaned.

Expected

Check before exiting that the target's parent is writable and the bundle is not translocated / on a read-only volume; if not, tell the user (and offer the download). Replace atomically with rollback from .old, remove .old on success, clean the temp dir, and report a script failure on next start.

Tasks

  • Pre-flight writable / translocation / read-only check before exit(0).
  • Remove || true, add rollback, remove .old.
  • Clean the extract dir.
  • Unit tests for the script builder (quoting, failure paths).
Dominant language
Dart
Stars
23
Forks
1
Avg merge
45m
Merged PRs (30d)
529

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