Free solution for automatic updates with a .NET/C# app?
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Published on 2010-12-24T04:10:03Z
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2010/12/24
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Yes, from searching I can see this has been asked time and time again.
Here's a backstory. I'm an individual hobbyist developer with zero budget. A program I've been developing has been in need of constant bugfixes, and me and users are getting tired of having to manually update.
Me, because my current solution of
- Manually FTP to my website
- Update a file "newest.txt" with the newest version
- Update index.html with a link to the newest version
- Hope for people to see the "there's an update" message
- Have them manually download the update
sucks, and whenever I screw up an update, I get pitchforks.
Users, because, well, "Are you ever going to implement auto-update?" "Will there ever be an auto-update feature?"
Over the past I have looked into:
- WinSparkle - No in-app updates, and the DLL is 500 KB. My current solution is a few KBs in the executable and has no in-app updates.
- http://windowsclient.net/articles/appupdater.aspx - I can't comprehend the documentation
- http://www.codeproject.com/KB/vb/Auto_Update_Revisited.aspx - Doesn't appear to support anything other than working with files that aren't in use
- wyUpdate - wyBuild isn't free, and the file specification is simply too complex. Maybe if I was under a company paying me I could spend the time, but then I may as well pay for wyBuild.
- http://www.kineticjump.com/update/default.aspx - Ditto the last sentence.
- ClickOnce - Workarounds for implementing launching on startup are massive, horrendous and not worth it for such a simple feature. Publishing is a pain; manual FTP and replace of all files is required for servers without FrontPage Extensions.
I'm pretty much ready to throw in the towel right now and strangle myself. And then I think about Sparkle...
EDIT: I came across SparkleDotNET just then. Looks good, though the DLL is 200 KB. Don't know if that's really that big of an issue, though.
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