On Tuesday 04 September 2007 08:30:09 am Jay Askren wrote:
> I'm working on an open source project in which I want to make updating
> the application very easy. For instance Firefox automatically updates
> itself when there is an update. MLS from the church does the same
> thing. I want to do this with my own Java application. Does anyone
> know of an open source, or at least inexpensive way to do this? Of
> course, I could make it a web app, and it would be a non issue, but
> this app is more appropriately a desktop app.
If you build your application on the Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform), you
can use the automatic update infrastructure built into Eclipse. Slide
already mentioned WebStart, which is another good approach, and one that's
simpler to set up (though it doesn't give you all of the other features of
RCP).
Finally, I've actually had to write my own automatic update system, and it
really wasn't difficult at all. Just break your app up into multiple jar
files and then write some code to check a server during startup to see if new
versions of any of the jars are available. If so, have your code download
and install replacement jars (optionally checking digital signatures to make
sure that nothing funny is going on). Add a little dialog window to show the
user that the download is happening and telling them to restart the app and
you're done.
Shawn.
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