Update-Installer/doc/update-hosting

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This project includes a tool for installing updates and specifies an XML-based
file format for describing the contents of a release. It does not include
the client-side tools to detect the availability of updates, download
updates that are found and invoke the update installer. It also does
not include the relevant server-side components. You will need to write
tools to do this.
The simplest option is to create, for each platform, a file_list.xml file and .zip
file containing the complete contents of the application on that platform.
1. Modify the file_list.xml file generated by the create_packages.rb script
to include <source> URLs specifying where to download the packages from and
then upload this modified file_list.xml file plus the compressed .zip packages to a server.
2. The client application should then periodically fetch the file_list.xml for the latest release
from a fixed URL (eg. http://www.yourdomain.com/updates/$PLATFORM/file_list.xml)
and check whether it is newer than the installed version, by checking the <targetVersion> element in the file.
3. If a newer version is available, the client should download the updater and .zip packages to a temporary directory
and invoke the updater to install the new version.
A more sophisticated option is to store the file_list.xml file and packages for each release
on the server. When the client checks for an update:
1. On the server, determine whether a newer version is available and if so,
determine the target version for the update. If you want to have multiple 'channels'
of updates (eg. stable channel, beta channel, development channel) then you can change
the target version depending on which channel the user is in.
2. Parse the file_list.xml for the client's current version and the
target version and generate a delta file_list.xml file listing only the
packages and files that have changed.
3. Return the delta file_list.xml file to the client, which then downloads the necessary
packages and installs the updates.