Sparkle (software)

Last updated
Sparkle
Original author(s) Andy Matuschak
Developer(s) Sparkle Project (2014–present)
Initial releaseJanuary 9, 2006 (2006-01-09)
Stable release
2.6.0 / March 15, 2024;17 days ago (2024-03-15)
Repository
Written in Objective-C, Swift
Operating system macOS
Type Software update
License MIT License
Website sparkle-project.org

Sparkle is an open-source software framework for macOS designed to simplify updating software for the end user of a program. Sparkle's primary means of distributing updates is through "appcasting," a term coined for the practice of using an RSS enclosure to distribute updates and release notes.

Contents

History

Sparkle 0.1 (beta) was released in January 2006 by Andy Matuschak to provide apps "instant self-update" functionality, which very few applications had at the time. [1]

In August 2009, Sparkle added support for delta updates for installing smaller and faster incremental updates. This was first used to update WebKit's nightly builds. [2]

In 2016, Radek discovered a man-in-the-middle attack vulnerability in applications that use Sparkle to receive updates through an unencrypted channel. [3]

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References

  1. Scott Granneman (2010). Mac OS X Snow Leopard for Power Users. Apress. pp. 9–10. ISBN   9781430230311.
  2. Brett Terpstra (13 January 2009). "WebKit adds some Sparkle". Engadget . Retrieved 1 April 2024.
  3. Dan Goodin (2 September 2016). ""Huge" number of Mac apps vulnerable to hijacking, and a fix is elusive". Ars Technica . Retrieved 29 March 2024.