Squirrel is both a set of tools and a library, to completely manage both installation and updating your Desktop Windows application.

This project is a fork of the library Squirrel.Windows, which has been largely discontinued by the author. The main focus here has been to update to more modern tooling, such as upgrading the main libraries to netstandard2.0.

This library will help you build a Setup.exe, integrated (or standalone Update.exe) application updater, and release updates to your users very quickly and easily. The Setup.exe and Update.exe produced by this library are completely dependency free, and can even help you bootstrap/install a runtime of your choice (such as dotnet 5, .net 4.8 or others).

Windows apps should be as fast and as easy to install and update as apps like Google Chrome. From an app developer's side, it should be really straightforward to create an installer for my app, and publish updates to it, without having to jump through insane hoops.

• Integrating an app to use Squirrel should be extremely easy, provide a client API, and be developer friendly.
• Packaging is really easy, can be automated, and supports delta update packages.
• Distributing should be straightforward, use simple HTTP updates, and provide multiple "channels" (a-la Chrome Dev/Beta/Release).
• Installing is Wizard-Free™, with no UAC dialogs, does not require reboot, and is .NET Framework friendly.
• Updating is in the background, doesn't interrupt the user, and does not require a reboot.

1. Install the Clowd.Squirrel Nuget Package

2. Add SquirrelAwareVersion attribute somewhere in your project. (It can be placed in any cs file, but usually it goes into AssemblyInfo.cs if your project has one)

   [assembly: AssemblyMetadata("SquirrelAwareVersion", "1")]

3. Handle Squirrel events somewhere very early in your application startup (such as the beginning of main() or Application.OnStartup() for WPF).

   SquirrelAwareApp.HandleEvents(
       onInitialInstall: OnInstall,
       onAppUpdate: OnUpdate,
       onAppUninstall: OnUninstall,
       onFirstRun: OnFirstRun);

   When installed, uninstalled or updated, your app will be run to give you a chance to add or remove application shortcuts.

   private static void OnInstall(Version obj)
   {
      using var mgr = new UpdateManager("https://the.place/you-host/updates");
      mgr.CreateUninstallerRegistryEntry();
      mgr.CreateShortcutForThisExe(ShortcutLocation.StartMenu | ShortcutLocation.Desktop);
   }

4. Publish your app (with dotnet publish or similar) and build a Nuget package with your publish output in the "lib/net45" target folder. (yes, even if your app does not have anything to do with net45) You can use NuGet.exe pack for this, or any other Nuget creation tool (eg. OctoPack).
   More information here
   Note: The package version must comply to strict SemVer syntax. (eg. 1.0.0, 1.0.1-pre)

5. Create a Squirrel release using the Squirrel.com --releasify command line tool. It is shipped with the Clowd.Squirrel nuget package. The path of the Squirrel tools is available via the MSBuild property $(SquirrelToolsPath) if you are integrating this into your build pipeline. If not, the tools can usually be found at:

   • %username%\.nuget\packages\Clowd.Squirrel\tools, or;
   • ..\packages\Clowd.Squirrel\tools

   Once you have located the tools folder, create a release. Example below with some useful options, but explore Squirrel.com -h for a complete list. You should use the same releaseDir each time, so delta updates can be generated.

   Squirrel.com --releasify MyApp.1.0.0.nupkg --selfContained --releaseDir=".\releases" --setupIcon=myIcon.ico

6. Distribute your entire releaseDir folder online. This folder can be hosted on any static web/file server, Amazon S3, BackBlaze B2, or even via GitHub Releases.

7. Update your app periodically with UpdateManager.

   private static void UpdateMyApp()
   {
      using var mgr = new UpdateManager("https://the.place/you-host/updates");
      var newVersion = await mgr.UpdateApp();
      
      // optionally restart the app automatically, or ask the user if/when they want to restart
      if (newVersion != null) {
         UpdateManager.RestartApp();
      }
   }

This quick start guide is coming soon. Refer to below for complete docs which contains native app instructions.

See the documentation Table of Contents for an overview of the available documentation.

For the impatient:

git clone https://github.com/clowd/Clowd.Squirrel
cd clowd/Clowd.Squirrel
build.cmd

See Contributing for additional information on building and contributing to Squirrel.

See COPYING for details on copyright and usage.