Updating Apps in a Sandbox

[mikebore]

Just started using a Sandbox, made with the "Shared User and Application" script. Fantastic feature which I have known about but never used and really wish I had years ago. It's not as complicated as the manual makes it sound!

My question is that when I update a non Apple app by drag and drop, I drag it to the Sandbox Apps Folder. Many apps provide an icon to make this easy. When I do this, I expected that the app's symlink would mean that the new version would be put in the Original Apps folder, hence the new version would be used by both Original and Sandbox.

But as I am sure you know, it doesn't work like that, the new version replaces the symlink on the Sandbox with the actual app, which is therefore only available to the Sandbox, and starts increasing the disk usage of the Sandbox.

I know page 38 of the manual talks about this in the context of installing new apps (for which a symlink obviously doesn't exist), but the manual doesn't talk about updating existing symlinked apps.

Presumably (not tried this yet, but obviously can), the correct way of updating an existing app is drag the new version into the Apps Folder of the Original, then the new version will be available to Sandbox and Original.

Also assume, for the ones I updated before I understood how it works, I can create a symlink in the Sandbox and delete the app in Sandbox.

Am I understanding it right?

Thanks

[dnanian]

That depends on what you want to do. The whole point of updating the app in the Sandbox is to isolate it there. So you wouldn't want to replace the original.

At the point you want to "sync" the two, you'd copy back and then recreate the Sandbox...

[mikebore]

Originally Posted by dnanian

That depends on what you want to do. The whole point of updating the app in the Sandbox is to isolate it there. So you wouldn't want to replace the original.

At the point you want to "sync" the two, you'd copy back and then recreate the Sandbox...

Thanks I understand. If the app is a beta or a system tweak it makes sense to protect the Original, but for routine non-beta updates then I would normally update the Original.

[dnanian]

The problem is that if it updates local resources first-run, those will be updated on the Sandbox, not the original...

[mikebore]

Ah OK, so really better to always update the Sandbox, copy back when ready and recreate Sandbox.

Thanks

[dnanian]

Yes, definitely. If you want to update the original volume.