Electron Releases

Description of Change

🚨 Note: This should be considered a high risk change, and should be tested in the 42 beta before being merged in stable branches.

The MachServices key in the ShipIt launchd job dictionary is a leftover from when ShipIt was an XPC service (removed in Squirrel/Squirrel.Mac@d6ca1c2 in October 2013). Since then, nothing connects to the registered Mach port.

When a macOS system update is pending, launchd puts the user domain into "on-demand-only mode", where only jobs with an on-demand trigger (like a MachServices connection) are started. Since nothing connects to ShipIt's Mach port, launchd pends the spawn indefinitely with: "pending spawn, domain in on-demand-only mode"

This prevents ShipIt from running, causing an Electron app's auto-updates to fail whenever a macOS update is staged. By the time the domain exits on-demand-only mode (after reboot/update completion), the staged update bundle is often stale, leading to "Too many attempts to install" errors.

Removing the MachServices key eliminates the on-demand trigger, so launchd falls back to evaluating KeepAlive.SuccessfulExit which correctly starts ShipIt immediately on submission.

Checklist

• I have built and tested this change
• I have filled out the PR description
• I have reviewed and verified the changes
• npm test passes
• tests are changed or added
• relevant API documentation, tutorials, and examples are updated and follow the documentation style guide
• PR release notes describe the change in a way relevant to app developers, and are capitalized, punctuated, and past tense.

Release Notes

Notes: Fixed an issue where an Electron auto-update job would occasionally fail if a macOS system update is pending.