Hi Rohan,
I can hear you loud and clear and I really wish it would be much easier. One thing I can tell you it's not as easy as it sounds. Building something like that from scratch is a huge undertaking. We looked at https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows and https://github.com/vslavik/winsparkle which are frameworks which could improve update size and handling but during our tests we stumbled upon several issues:
* stability: these libraries work well most of the time but when it doesn't, it's really painful to debug, diagnose and get a fix in
* open source: while open source is mostly a good thing and I'm happy to support open source projects wherever I can, looking at squirrel alone, is not really reassuring. Not sure if the project is "dead" already but they are desperately looking for contributors
* enterprise support: a lot of our customers are enterprise customer and they rely on good mechanism to deploy software in their infrastructure. MSI is still the best and most stable technology for that. The other frameworks make it hard in these environments.
With .NET 5 and later we now also have the opportunity to create self-containing deployments. Which mean, we are not dependent on any .NET Framework installation on the client machine. We had several issues in the past because of a corrupt Framework installation or some weird issues where the app just wouldn't start or behave because of the version installed on the client was slightly different than the version we compiled against.
The downside of self-contained deployment is the increased package size but the upside of using .NET 5 in Royal TS V6 is that the "optimizing" part is a thing of the past. Installation (once downloaded) should be much quicker now (essentially a file copy).
I'm really sorry we don't have a better solution right now but if there's a better alternative which works with all our requirements, I'm happy to switch to something more efficient.
cheers,
Stefan
Rohan Beckett
as a long time RoyalTS user (since v2)... I'm finally going to vent a complaint:
While I love, and applaud your constant update/improvements...
I'm SO sick of having to run a full 130meg download/install/wait-while-dotnet-chugs-my PC 'optimising'.
I use RoyalTS on 7 workstations at the six different sites(Schools) I work at, as well as my Home PC...
and it's REALLY starting to grind my gears at having to upgrade all 7 installations, sometimes every week or two...
(5 upgrades since v6's June release = me installing RoyalTS 35 times in less than 8 weeks!!)
SURELY you guys can come up with a built-in updater/patching system
I'd love it to just launch RoyalTS.. have it detect a new version available -> Dialog: "would you like to upgrade?" Yes.... 20meg patch downloads/installs... and bam.. done!
thankyou for my vent :)