The State of the Art of Auto Upgrading - How do You Do It?

[Sivakatirswami]

  I'm looking (again) into the various methods used by everyone to do 
auto upgrades where

1) You deliver the engine in a "player-splash" stack  via the web. This 
engine itself may need to be upgraded from time to time.

2) the engine auto downloads the "mainstack.rev" that holds your 
application code.

Now, every time I start thinking about this my head starts to spin 
because I see and have seen so many different options.

GLX seems very complicated and though I expect there are lots of great 
reasons to use Trevor's work, I'm concerned about the level of 
complexity and the vulnerability that comes with it.

I tend to always look for the simplest possible solution, but as David 
Allen said in today's GTD newsletter, sometimes choosing an overly 
simplified path, ends up landing you in a much more complicated mess in 
the end.

I have Chipp Walters old method of using a my-cool-app-config.txt file 
on the web server with 8 lines 4 are dedicated to upgrading the engine; 
4 are dedicated to upgrading the main stack. The engine reads this on 
boot and prompts the user for engine updates. the Mainstack reads this 
on boot and prompts for mainstack updates. It's simple enough ad seems 
solid, but weak if proxy support is needed.

Chipp: are you still using and happy with this method?

My own current system is a bit weak and simply takes the user back to a 
web page where they are prompted to download the latest whatever. I 
would much rather being doing some of this in place.

It would be marvelous if someone were to host a page where all the 
various methods you are all using were posted.

At any rate, at the risk of asking you all to detail your method, yet 
again, if anyone feels inspired to reply to this thread with a full 
description of "Here is How I Do It"

  I will certainly compile all the methods, do the necessary HTML mark 
up  and host them on our site -- though it really should go on a more 
appropriate place in RunRev's site or Richard's site or Ken Rays Site or 
.... so many places... Fragmentation of RunRev resources is still a big 
challenge.... as I'm finding when trying to mentor some young people who 
don't even know programming, to get started...but that's another story.