How to distribute deb package to be able to install updates from code

Question

I've made a deb package which contains binaries of my software. Also I've made a repo and configured it so user can install updates using sudo apt-get update mypackage && sudo apt-get install mypackage. After installation binaries of my application will be extracted to /opt/mypackage and .desktop file will be extracted to /usr/share/applications so user can launch the application without issues.

What I want to know is how can I install updates of my application from code when they are available in the user system as it's done in other applications? I'm asking because it requires root password when running apt-get install or sudo gdebi mypackage.

At the moment when I want to push new updates - I build new .deb package and put it to the repository. Should I do it in the other way? Or maybe I was wrong when decided to put binaries in /opt directory?

Any help will be appreciated. If you know some open-source projects where this part of the functionality is implemented could you please share it? Also, I can create a simple repository which reproduces what I tried to explain here.

Answer 1

Providing software as a package (of the .deb or RPM variety) and allowing software to update itself on its own are mutually exclusive. As you noticed, installing or upgrading packaged software can only be done by the administrator, and it’s expected that the system will be kept updated by its administrator. On many systems this is made easier by tools such as GNOME Software which will tell the user about pending updates and take care of applying them without manually running apt update etc.

“Other” programs you mention, which can update themselves, can only do so if the user they’re running as can write to the locations they’re installed in. This is often the case with manually-installed binaries, but many larger programs have moved away from this in recent years — Google Chrome, and VS Code, now install from package repositories and behave as expected.

You worked around the limitations in Firefox’s case but that’s a bad idea. Running software as root when it doesn’t need to be root isn’t recommended, and letting a packaged piece of software update itself means the packaging system is no longer aware of what’s installed.

Another point is that most distribution-packaged software explicitly disables update checks — for one thing, they’re useless because they can’t be acted upon directly, and for another, disabling update checks means the software doesn’t need to “phone home”, which many users care about.