undefined | Better HN

story

0 pointsplq7y ago0 comments

> My favorite is prompting me to restart to install an update when I open it.

It's the best they can do. Windows carries a lot of baggage and bad decisions around its OS design. One of them is that when a file has an exclusive lock (eg an .exe file that's running) it can't be deleted. NTFS and Windows Kernel don't implement reference counting like a proper OS.

So Firefox (or any software package with in-place self-update functionality) needs to wait until the application is shut down to perform updates. Firefox team chose to do it before launching the app. They could have done it after closing it. Both approaches have their pros and cons so it's not easy to criticize them either way.

0 comments

teknologist7y ago

I am not an expert on this, but I believe Chrome downloads a new exe waiting to be copied over when it is launched. The Firefox updater on the other hand is a whole progress bar experience where a lot of things seem to have to happen to perform an update.

riskable7y ago

This is correct. Chrome handles updates via a completely separate .exe that runs via the Windows Task Scheduler.

I know this because my company pushed out a Group Policy update a while back that removed the ability of users to add/remove scheduled tasks and it broke Chrome updates across the company.

Also, this problem (not being able to patch a running app) is unique to Windows because of its terrible file locking implementation (that are the result of a bad decision made decades ago!). In Linux you'll get Chrome, Chromium, and Firefox updates along with everything else and it won't disrupt your use in the slightest. You can restart the app to apply those updates at your leisure!

iaml7y ago

Firefox does this too, see Mozilla Maintenance Service.

dx0347y ago

I believe the problem with Edge is (correct me if I'm wrong) that files that would need to be updated are used by Windows Explorer, so any update would need a restart of the machine.

h1d7y ago

I thought they pushed Windows 10 and Edge to let go of legacy cruft. This is so year 2000 that app update needs a reboot.

russdpale7y ago

I remember being so excited to try windows ME... and let down so, so, so, so hard.

pjmlp7y ago

Today I learned that VMS wasn't a proper OS, because proper OS let processes blindly overwrite files from others.

gvb7y ago

Unlink with reference counting, not overwrite. This allows the program to "delete" itself but the file remains as an unnamed file on the drive until the last program that references it exits.

If the file name was the last hard link to the file, the file itself is deleted as soon as no program has it open.

Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlink_(Unix)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse