Personally I’m using a very simple methodology for any kind of auto-update: Have an installer Check the new version (simple WebClient and compare numbers with your current AssemblyVersion) If the version is higher download the latest installer (should be over SSL for security reasons) Run the downloaded installer and close the application. (in this stage … Read more
Google have an open-source framework called Omaha which does exactly what your point 1. describes. It runs as a scheduled Windows task in the background, outside the applications it manages. Google use Omaha to auto-update their Windows applications, including Chrome. Because it comes from Google, and because it is installed on every Windows machine that … Read more
There is a suite of tools from the cloudmatrix guys that addresses that problem. esky is an auto-update framework for frozen apps that is compatible with the common python “packaging” frameworks. signedimp tries to ensure that apps are not modified after they are signed, and to minimize invasive Windows UAC dialogs. myppy aims to insulate … Read more
ClickOnce has its own security limitations (understandbly so). If you want the full power and control of a Windows application then go with the .NET application updater component. It works like a charm and has even been used by Microsoft internally for their .NET based game (I don’t remember the game name though).
Implement it yourself! It will be fun. Create a separate application that only contains update logic i.e., fetch the files online, download them, replace local files, and show that visually to the user. So your main application could check for updates, and if they exist it would prompt the user with the possibility to update. … Read more
What ever scheme you use, it may be handy to know that you can actually rename a running .exe file. So rename file, copy in new file works nice. And the next time someone launch the program they will launch a the new version. This is ofcourse very handy in enviroment where many users run … Read more
In Linux, or any other form of unix, os.execl and friends are a good choice for this — you just need to re-exec sys.executable with the same parameters it was executed with last time (sys.argv, more or less) or any variant thereof if you need to inform your next incarnation that it’s actually a restart. … Read more
It is not a complete solution, but a cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux) tool for creating packages for auto-updates and installing them is available at https://github.com/mendeley/Update-Installer. This tool does not deal with publishing updates or downloading them. This was written for use with a Qt-based application but to make the update installer small, standalone and easy … Read more
Not on Windows. If you are getting your JDK via a linux distro with an auto-updater, you could depend on that. Somehow I doubt that is what you have in mind. I do not believe that there is any Sun-supplied auto-download for the JDK.