[HN Gopher] Show HN: I hate adding updating to my apps, so I cre...
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Show HN: I hate adding updating to my apps, so I created Pakkly
Author : enatik
Score : 60 points
Date : 2021-05-22 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (pakkly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (pakkly.com)
| DoctorNick wrote:
| Be very careful about this. App toolchains love to create
| dependencies on services like this without asking you, and then
| you'll be bombarded with support requests.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| This looks like a neat idea! You might want to check the site out
| on mobile, the updating text in the header seems to change the
| number of lines that section takes up and makes the whole site
| jump up and down while I try to read it.
| enatik wrote:
| Thanks for the kind words and heads up, I removed the scrolling
| effect while I decide on a long-term solution.
| jscholes wrote:
| > Simply drag-and-drop your files to make it instantly available
| for your clients. The next time they start your application it
| will self-update to the latest version.
|
| How does the latter half of this work? Specifically, if I haven't
| modified my app to incorporate your service, how does running it
| trigger the updater? I assume some sort of wrapper executable?
|
| If the above is correct, how much overhead does that wrapper add?
| What happens if an update is available, but the user's internet
| connection is slow/down? Will my app be allowed to run while
| updates are checked for in the background, and if so, do you fire
| a message telling the user once an update is known to be
| available? Or just silently restart it?
| enatik wrote:
| Yes, you are correct, Pakkly adds a thin wrapper to your
| executable which is built with Rust to be as lightweight and
| fast as possible. This wrapper adds virtually no overhead
| besides taking up a bit of memory (around 8mb).
|
| Update checking only happens on startup, currently. Your app
| performance will not be affected. In case the server is not
| responding during startup Pakkly will continue, after a brief
| delay, executing your app. The startup update check will fire
| at most once every 60 seconds (In case someone starts your app
| in quick succession).
|
| Update notifications are planned, but these will be optional,
| and will never stop your app for you.
| jelling wrote:
| This looks cool but can you share anything about pricing?
| enatik wrote:
| The pricing hasn't yet been finalized but it will be fixed per
| app.
| jelling wrote:
| I would post something up as soon as you can. You're front
| page of Hacker News but right now no one with a commercial
| app can really think about using it without some sense of
| pricing.
|
| You can always change it later. Call it introductory pricing
| or something.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| For a developer-focused product, it's really painful that there's
| absolutely no technical description here. Tell us how it works!
|
| Also, "free forever for open source" strikes me as problematic
| because of the above point: Isn't an open source product likely
| to prefer open source updating? Open source communities tend to
| get really sticky about apps installing things themselves and
| such, so this seems like a really iffy place to add a proprietary
| component.
|
| That aside, I totally see a lot of room for more/better updating
| mechanics. There's two major culprits I find in a lot of large-
| scale apps, and I don't really like either of them. But then
| again... without knowing how Pakkly works, especially OS-specific
| install details, I'm not sure I'll like it either. ;)
| enatik wrote:
| A more technical description is coming soon! I'm planning to
| post a blog post to provide transparency on how the system
| works. I hope that will clear things up and I hope you will
| like it ;)
| [deleted]
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Shit son, I've been hoping someone would do this. How can I
| contact you?
| enatik wrote:
| I'm hesitant to share my personal email publicly, but you can
| contact me at contact@enatik.com and I will get back to you
| ASAP.
| arkitaip wrote:
| The mobile design: layout and margins look out of place on
| Firefox Android. The lists with red crosses look disjointed.
|
| Header: why do the Sign In and Get Started links point to the
| same URL? Do you need a Home link for what's essentially a single
| page site?
|
| The Steps section: could probably be better presented by a video
| above fold in the future to take far less space.
|
| The Newsletter section: the white background and wide margins
| makes the section seem like it belongs to the previous section
| (Step 3).
|
| I think you could use a WP performance/caching plugin to easily
| improve site performance. My favorite combo right now is Breeze
| and Cloudflare.
| enatik wrote:
| Thanks for the great feedback, I'll try to cover it all:
|
| The mobile design: I absolutely agree, I didn't expect so many
| of our users to come from mobile as the target demographic is
| desktop developers. I see now that I may have misjudged things
| a bit. Future plans definitely include a nicer website with
| better mobile support.
|
| Header: They won't very soon, Pakkly's still in Beta, some
| things are placeholders for future functionality.
|
| The Steps section: Absolutely agreed, we are already working on
| a video explainer.
|
| The Newsletter section: I thought it fitting into 100% of the
| viewport height made it distinct.
|
| In regard to caching, we had a caching plugin but it caused
| some strange layout bugs so we disabled it, I'll look into
| those, thanks!
| halsom wrote:
| As a desktop developer, I would like you to know that I also
| have a mobile phone and I use it to read Hacker News during
| my breaks.
|
| This looks like a very cool project. I wish it was around
| before I glued together my current hellish multi-platform
| release system. I will dig into it before I require it again.
| comex wrote:
| > Use your valuable development time creating your app, not it's
| packaging.
|
| FYI, "it's" should be "its".
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