How to best implement software updates on windows? [closed]

Answer 1

There's now a Windows port of Sparkle, see http://winsparkle.org.

Answer 2

For .NET applications you might want to have a look at NetSparkle, a Sparkle variant for .NET programs. It is pretty new (from 2011) and developed actively.

Answer 3

If your application is written in .Net, you could try ClickOnce. However, it's difficult to perform administrative or custom actions during install using this approach.

Answer 4

It's a good idea to use a third-party solution, cause autoupdates can be a pain, especially with Windows Vista/7 (UAC). For what it's worth, the product my company uses is AutoUpdate+ and it seems to work fairly well.

Answer 5

Just came here from an answer to my own question on the same subject - I mention one other updating solution in my question. It uses a stub loader, and an xml file to point to the latest executable.

Answer 6

Google Chrome auto-update is based on Omaha:

http://code.google.com/p/omaha/

Their overview has a great section on why it was needed:

The browser typically prompted the user with a long series of techy, confusing and scary dialogs all trying to convince the user not to install. Then the user was prompted with a wizard filled with choices that they did not need to or know how to decide amongst. These factors combined to form a bad user experience and large drop-off during the app installation process