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

Answer 1

For .NET, a while back Microsoft Patterns + Practices published the Application Updater Block. This was (to my mind) rather overblown and over-engineered, but did the job quite well.

In essence it used a "stub loader" to check a manifest and a Web service to see if a later version of the program than the one installed was available, then used the BITS background downloader technology to download a new version if one was available on the server.

Once the new version was downloaded and installed (with .NET this is as simple as an xcopy to the relevant folder), the application would update the manifest. The next time the program was loaded the new version would be launched.

While the Patterns + Practices code is .NET specific, there's nothing there that couldn't be copied for a non-.NET application, especially if you have the ability to silently run the install process in the background.

Answer 2

wyUpdate looks really nice. See video here: http://wyday.com/wybuild/help/automatic-updates/

Answer 3

There is no solution quite as smooth as Sparkle (that I know of).

If you need an easy means of deployment and updating applications, ClickOnce is an option. Unfortunately, it's inflexible (e.g., no per-machine installation instead of per-user), opaque (you have very little influence and clarity and control over how its deployment actually works) and non-standard (the paths it stores the installed app in are unlike anything else on Windows).

Much closer to what you're asking would be ClickThrough, a side project of WiX, but I'm not sure it's still in development (if it is, they should be clearer about that…) — and it would use MSI in any case, not NSIS.

You're likely best off rolling something on your own. I'd love to see a Sparkle-like project for Windows, but nobody seems to have given it a shot thus far.