Cyanogenmod found an update, it downloaded it, then it rebooted to install it and nothing happened. It turns out that the update procedure cannot work if the zip file to install is in encrypted media, so a workaround is to move the zip into unencrypted external storage.
As far as I know, my Nexus 4 has no unencrypted external storage.
This is how I managed to upgrade it, I write it here so I can find it next time:
- enable USB debugging
adb pull /cmupdater/cm-11-20141115-SNAPSHOT-M12-mako.zip
adb reboot recovery
- choose "install zip from sideload"
adb sideload cm-11-20141115-SNAPSHOT-M12-mako.zip