Skip to main content

FAQ

Applies to
Windows
MacOS
Linux

Commonly asked questions about Velopack.

  • My application was detected as a virus?
    Velopack can't help with this, but you can code-sign your app and check other suggestions here.
  • What happened to SquirrelAwareApp? / Shortcuts
    This concept no longer exists in Velopack. You can create hooks on install/update in a similar way using the VelopackApp builder. Although note that reating shortcuts or registry entries yourself during hooks is no longer required.
  • Can Velopack bootstrap new runtimes during updates?
    Yes, this is fully supported. Before installing updates, Velopack will prompt the user to install any missing updates.
  • How do I install the vpk tool? / I've installed the tool but it doesn't work For now, you need to install dotnet runtime 6.0 or 8.0 for your platform, and then run dotnet tool update -g vpk. If you get a message that it was installed successfully, but running it in your terminal results in a "binary/command not found" message, it's probably because your PATH is not set-up properly. For windows, %USERPROFILE%\.dotnet\tools should be on the PATH. For macos, see this issue. In general, dotnet should set these paths up for you, but that is what you should check if things are not working.
  • Can I use a 4 part version (1.0.0.0) instead of SemVer2? Velopack only supports a 3 part version with tags and metadata (1.0.0-build.23+metadata) following the SemVer2 standard. Some people choose to version with the date, 2024.01.12 for example. It's also possible to get automated git commit based versioning using something like nbgv. The reason Velopack supports SemVer2 and not traditional 4 part versions is that it's possible to provide a lot more information in SemVer2 versions, and it is not feasible for us to support both formats throughout the framework.