sparkleology

= sparkleology

• http://drnicutilities.rubyforge.org/sparkleology
• http://github.com/drnic/sparkleology

== DESCRIPTION:

Takes a Mac OS X application name that uses Sparkle for auto-updates, and returns information about that application's Sparkle RSS feed or the latest download URL for that Application.

The command-line app +sparkleology+ has two modes of operation depending on the argument/STDIN provided. If the last argument, or STDIN, is:

• an application name => the Sparkle RSS feed URL is returned
• a Sparkle RSS feed URL => the latest version download URL is returned

That is, the result of sparkleology can be passed to itself.

sparkleology Skitch => http://update.plasq.com/skitch-appcast.xml sparkleology http://update.plasq.com/skitch-appcast.xml => http://skitch.com/download/skitch-b6.2-v10678.zip

Therefore, since +sparkleology+ can take the argument as STDIN as well, you can pipe the results together:

sparkleology Skitch | sparkleology sparkleology Skitch | xargs sparkleology

both return http://skitch.com/download/skitch-b6.2-v10678.zip

The reason that +sparkleology+ returns the RSS feed URL if you give it an App Name is that this feed URL is permanently consistent, whereas the download URL possibly changes with each new application version. So, the feed URL could be stored and then used later (say on a machine that does not have the original app already installed) to fetch the latest version of the application, which may or may not be already installed.

We're using this in the http://github.com/bjeanes/noober script for installing a list of apps on a fresh OS X machine.

== FEATURES/PROBLEMS:

• Can return the RSS feed for a given application that contains the "latest version" URL
• Can return the "latest version" URL for a given application, either from the Application name or the RSS feed URL for an Application (say if the Application isn't yet installed)

== SYNOPSIS:

Allows for scripting of fetching and/or installing the latest version of a specific OS X application.

== REQUIREMENTS:

• RubyGems:
  • libxml-ruby
  • plist

== INSTALL:

• sudo gem install sparkleology

== LICENSE:

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2008 Dr Nic Williams, Mocra

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.