Can anyone recommend a easy/good Auto-Update add-on for VB6?

There appears to be so many to choose from I just can't decide which is
worth the money and which are not.

Perhaps some here can recommend what they personally found to be a good
auto-updating program.


Thanks in advance.

Webbiz

Might help if you clarified what you mean by "auto-update". There's lots of
things you might "auto-update".  Also not sure exactly what you mean by
"add-ON".  VB6 doesn't have add-ONs.  It has add-INs.  And these are for the
IDE (although the add-in might help you do something in your program).

However, I'm guessing you mean something to check your program's version and
automatically update it if a newer version exists. This isn't that hard to
write. The trick is that it needs to be a separated application.....because
at some point you're going to replace your program's EXE file with a new one
and you can't do that if your program is running.  So, you need to close it,
update it (done by the 2nd program) and then restart it.

Show quote Hide quote Hello Mike. Thanks for replying.

As it stands right now, when I make changes to the program, I have to
notifiy all the users, and I create a new build and upload it. It is a
complete full size replacement of the old program.

However, I have purchased applications that you can click a "Check for
Updates" button or menu and it checks for updates and then starts to
download the updated files. Some programs I may need to stop the program,
others appear to do the  update while I still have the program running
(although perhaps they don't take affect until you shut down and restart the
app..dunno.)

Also, I found programs that do PATCHES. These seem to just create
self-extracting files that contain only the changes, allowing for small size
files to download. The user only needs to run the self-extracting file to
update the program.

I don't really know how all these work. There are many applications designed
to create these "updating" apps, so I was hoping to get some direction as to
what product works best, or what book to read to do this, or anything.

Webbiz

Show quote Hide quote OK, so what you want to auto-update is your program. I figured that was it,
but you weren't really clear so I just wanted to make sure.

You've obviously looked into this....at least a little bit. Personally, I
think it's best to write your own update process. Granted, I've never looked
at any of the ones available, but I just can't imagine them doing it as YOU
really want/need it to be done. So I think it's best to write your own.

I personally detest patches. What patches do is modify compiled files to
incorporate the updates. To me, this just opens the door for unlimited
problems, even if the "patch" is successful. I think it's much better, and
easier, to just completely replace the outdated files with new ones. But as
you've stated, the benefit to patches are that they usually are considerably
smaller. 10 years ago when most people had dial-up, that was a concern.
However, today, dial-up internet connections are not the norm. So, if you
need to download even 2-3 MB of updates, it shouldn't be that much of an
issue. Of course, you haven't mentioned anything at all about your audience,
so perhaps many of your users do indeed only have dial-up.

As far as whether your app needs to close or not.....it depends on WHAT is
getting updated. For example, almost every antivirus program updates itself
with new virus definitions.  Unless the program is currently scanning,
however, the virus definition files are not going to be in use and so can be
updated while the antivirus program is running. But the antivirus executable
program CANNOT be updated while it's running. And to go a step further,
antivirus programs usually consist of several executable files and/or DLL
files. Certain EXE/DLL files might only be in use during an actual scan, so
these files could also be updated while the main executable is running.

As you've also mentioned, if the file(s) is/are in use, you can delay the
actual update until the system is restarted, or just choose to close the
program and either have the user manually restart it, or restart it
automically. How you choose to do this depends on several factors and is
really something that only you can determine (because it's going to depend
on your program). Unless the program is tightly integrated with Windows
(meanning it includes drivers, services, etc. that Windows loads/starts on
startup), it's rare that to update a program, you'd need to reboot the
system. Now Microsoft's own programs, such as any Office app, is another
story.

Here's a freeware "check for update"...

http://www.instyler.com/products/lun.asp

I haven't tried it, so I can't comment on it nor know what it all does
(i.e., does it download and run the update too or just check for updates).

I haven't used any third party auto updaters, I've rolled my own awhile back
when I needed such a feature.  It isn't that difficult of a concept.  You
just need to plan it out thoroughly. And you can do it in VB since the
runtimes should already be installed.  Here's a previous post with a little
more detail if you decide to roll your own (please watch for word
wrapping)...
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.basic.visual.misc/msg/ebe91b0e38ed8
9b5



Show quoteHide quote

Show quote Hide quote BearFish and Mike, thanks for your replies.

The only thing that gets updated on my program is the program itself. This
would be the EXE, not any DLL's or OCX's, etc.

I would like to make sure that every user is made aware of that a new EXE is
available, and to make it easy to replace the old one.

I'm just not sure how to go about doing this without making something that
may be easy more difficult than it is.

What would be the suggested approach then to notify my users of the new EXE,
get it downloaded onto the machine, and replace the old one?  Also, I would
like to make sure the user does not ignore this update but is either nagged
to death to download the free upgrade or some other proper approach.

Thank you.

Webbiz

Show quote Hide quote My first bit of advice is that you proofread your messages before posting.
There's one or 2 things that don't make sense and one or 2 more that are
just contradictory. That means we need to guess at the meaning of what
you're saying. That last sentence in particular has me perplexed.

But, I don't know what else we can tell you. You have to make some decisions
on your own. Personally, I think you should make it optional as to whether
your program even checks for updates. As far as I'm concerned, you should
give the user options for this (how often to check if at all, update
automatically or just notify that an update is available, if not updated
automatically how often to "remind" the user, etc., etc.). IOW, basically
leave it up to the user how often they want to be nagged about updates. And
use reasonable defaults for all of these. IMO, unless your program depends
on very up-to-date data and that data should be updated regularly (such as
antivirus programs) or deals with sensitive information and security is
concerned (so you may need to regularly update your program to fix security
issues), your program should NEVER nag about updates.

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