Sparkle is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software framework In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software, providing generic functionality, can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software. It provides a standard ...

for

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

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 RSS enclosures are a way of attaching multimedia content to RSS feeds by providing the URL of a file associated with an entry, such as an MP3 file to a music recommendation or a photo to a diary entry. Unlike e-mail attachments, enclosures are ...

to distribute updates and release notes. At the end of 2013, development of Sparkle was ended by the original author, then later picked up by the newly formed Sparkle Project open source group on

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

in June 2014 as the official continuation of the project.

Other OS alternatives

There are several open source Windows alternatives to offer similar functionality to Sparkle:
wyUpdate
(BSD licensed) in tandem with th
AutomaticUpdater
(LGPL licensed)
WinSparkle
(MIT licensed) There is also a

REALbasic The Xojo programming environment and programming language is developed and commercially marketed by Xojo, Inc. of Austin, Texas for software development targeting macOS, Microsoft Windows, Linux, iOS, the Web and Raspberry Pi. Xojo uses a propri ...

implementation of Sparkle that works on macOS, Windows and Linux
RBSparkle

References

External links

Sparkle homepage

Sparkle development page
at

Sparkle
at

MacUpdate MacUpdate is a Mac software download website founded in 1996. History In the ''Inc.'' 5000 list of private American companies with the fastest revenue growth, MacUpdate was listed 319th in 2008, 114th in 2009, and 233rd in 2010. MacUpdate ...

MacOS programming tools Patch utilities Software using the MIT license {{mac-software-stub