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What's Auto Patcher?

Auto Patcher is a program I made that makes it easier for the users of your applications to allways use the latest version. When someone starts the patcher it will compare the version on their machine against the latest version on your FTP server.

If there is a new version available it will download it and run the application once updated. If the user already has the latest version the Auto Patcher will start the application immediately.

This makes it really convenient for your users because they never have to think about manually getting the latest version.

Setup and uploading

First of all you have to download the application from the projects page. Once you have it on your computer the first thing you want to do
is to run AutoPatcherDev.exe located in the developer folder. Since this is the first time you run the program the credentials dialog will get displayed.



Enter the login information on your FTP server in the first 3 fields (ex: ftp.myftp.org, myusername, mypassword). Enter the name of the
.exe file you want to start on the client in the Executable field and the directory on your FTP server you wish to use in the Directory field (ex: myexe.exe, /myftp.org/app1/).

Then press the Generate file button to generate the login information file. This is the file the users of your application will use to connect to your FTP server and check for new versions. The important information in the file is encrypted.

Now you will get prompted with the patcher dialog box:



It's from this dialog you will update the FTP server with new versions. As you can see you can edit the credentials you just entered by pressing the Edit credentials button but the key button is Upload patch. But before you can use it you have to make sure your folders are setup correctly. When you press the upload button Auto Patcher will upload all files in the app folder to the FTP server.



That means that you have to place all files you wish to upload in the app folder! Once you've done that then you can upload the files by pressing the Upload patch button. Enter the version name and the patch notes in the dialog box, this will get displayed when a user updates his version. Auto Patcher will now add the content in app/ to a temporary .zip archive and then upload it to the FTP server.

Distribution

The only files people need in order to use your application is the AutoPatcher.exe located in the client folder and the FTP login information file you have generated.This file have to be in the same directory as the Auto Patcher client:



The first time they run AutoPatcher.exe it will download all the files you have uploaded and place them inside a folder called app. When they got the latest version Auto Patcher will automatically run the executable you specified in the credentials dialog.