How to publish a Go app and make it self-updatable?

[high willow]

I’m working on a Go CLI app: https://github.com/Zimzozaur/don and I want it to be self-updatable from within the app itself.

Specifically, I want the update command in my main.go (line 32: https://github.com/Zimzozaur/don/blob/024e35a6011844b0cca348dbf1d6160acd7f6104/main.go#L32) to:

1. Easily download the latest version of the app
2. Replace the existing binary so I can run the newest version immediately

I’m also a bit confused about publishing Go apps in general. How do people usually make a CLI available for anyone to install and update easily?

What’s the simplest way to do this in Go? Ideally I’d like to avoid creating tags or releases if possible.

[finite zealot]

What’s the simplest way to do this in Go?
simplest for you or for users?

the simplest method for you would be simply pushing to the repo and expecting users to run go install again after somehow getting the news of an update to them, but as you can imagine that might not be ideal on the user’s end

integrating into well-known package managers is probably the best experience from the user’s perspective, but it takes some leg work on your end

Go’s tooling doesn’t provide any sort of “hey, we noticed this module has an update” like something like npm does; it’s always driven manually (either per-package or with a go get -u for all dependencies in a module, but even that doesn’t do things like notify about new major versions, since they’re separate modules)

[high willow]

In my case it does make sense. When you look up the line that I have linked. I have this part github.com/Zimzozaur/don@latest that does not work.

How can I make a command that literally downloads the last commit so you have the newest version of CLI?

[high willow]

stuff like aur etc right?

[finite zealot]

you have it in your README; what isn’t working?

that will update the binary when run

oh, i see you’re referring to the code rather than the repo in general

notice your README uses main while your code uses latest

the former will get the newest commit on main; the latter will get the newest tag

when you said you’d like the avoid creating tags i assumed you weren’t trying already 😁

[high willow]

my readme is buggy

I run few times on mac and linux to double check don update and it is not update. Changed version on git also to see it working

[high willow]

let me check

When you run go install github.com/Zimzozaur/don@main it install verion 0.0.4 and not 0.0.5... What is wrong with it?

What is the right way to install literally last commit without knowing version or hash of last commit?

[finite zealot]

that is @main, you’ve got it

[high willow]

but it installs the older one

[finite zealot]

are you sure that you’re not still running the old version of the binary’s update command?

i’m not sure off the top of my head whether the proxy factors into commit-based pulls in addition to tag-based ones, but that could be what’s happening

if you set GOPROXY=direct in the environment and you get the new version, that's probably what happened

in any case, i think the caching won't last for more than fifteen minutes or so

[high willow]

It still downloads the older version

[finite zealot]

try GOPROXY=direct go install github.com/Zimzozaur/don@main

[finite zealot]

sorry i had the value wrong here, i edited it

[high willow]

Nice. That's a good one

[finite zealot]

this should only be relevant for a few minutes after you publish the commit

the proxy will eventually time out the old cached copy

[high willow]

but if I want to install rn than I have to use it right?

[finite zealot]

yes, if you want to get it absolutely immediately then you may need to