stableUpdate 1.0.5 review

stableUpdate is a tool for advanced user who wants to know, which part of the application will by touched by the newly released updat

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Audrius Me?kauskas

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stableUpdate is a tool for advanced user who wants to know, which part of the application will by touched by the newly released update, accept the decission about necessity to install the update and, if needed, be able to remove the previously installed update.

It is written is java and is supposed to be called from inside java application. From a server stableUpdate only needs possibility to download files via http. The only file that must keep its location is a short xml document.

Changing this document, you can easily manage the list of secondary servers that provide the actual update files. It also holds release notes and mini announcement desk. In older versions you needed write this file manually. Since 1.0.2 stableUpdate will generate (or update) it for you, and you only need to upload it to one or better servaral primary servers. If you want, you can still look at the commented example of this file.

In stableUpdate, the updates are stored in .jar files. Each such update upgrades between the two versions. The version names need not match exactly your official versions. For example, you may officially release 1.1 and 1.2, but 1.1 can have subsequent updates from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2, then to 1.1.3 and so on.

The update .jar file contains the changed single files and the changed entries of .jar and .zip archives. Since stableUpdate 1.0.3 the size and checksum of this .jar are verified after download.

If needed, the updates can be uninstalled in reverse order as they were installed. The user may need to uninstall the update if one discovers that some needed feature is actually working worse (or not working at all) in a newer version. The "uninstall" feature is available since the stableUpdate 1.0.1

The update is generated by comparing two folders, one containing the old installation and another the new installation. The generator is invoked as the main default class of autoupdater.jar (type java -jar autoupdater.jar) and has some very simple user interface.

The created .jar archive consists of changed individual files, changed files in .jar or .zip archives and deleting instructions, used to remove files present in the old, but absent in the updated version. *.bat, *.sh, Log/*, Cache/* , autooutdate/* (the folder for uninstall information) and jre/* will be ignored. .bat and .sh files usually contain installation specific information, and java virtual machine cannot be updated while running.

What's New in This Release:
Minor fixes, added docs to the release