igor-ruivo / generic-auto-updater

Generic Auto-Updater: a robust, user-friendly, clean and efficient Auto-Updater to maintain any client patched.

Generic Auto-Updater

A robust, user-friendly, clean and efficient Auto-Updater for any client.

The Idea

After finishing a stable beta version of the "Auto-Updater" to be used by a specific company, I decided to duplicate the repository and making a few tweaks in the copy to turn it public (and generic) in order for it to be used by anyone. And thus, the first version of the "Generic Auto-Updater" was born! - A robust, user-friendly, clean and efficient Auto-Updater for anyone who wishes to maintain their client's users always updated based on some server directory.

Getting Started

These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Prerequisites

Git;
Visual Studio 2019 (administrator priviledges) with Windows Forms App (.NET Framework);
.NET Framework 4.7.2.

Installing

1. Clone this repository

git clone https://github.com/igor-ruivo/generic-auto-updater.git

... or fork it / use it as a template.

2. Read the documentation!

For instance, keep in mind that the engine is expecting a server metadata file with a specific structure, like so:

http://your-directory-with-files/
filename1
hash1
filename2
hash2
filenameN
hashN

Meaning that the first line should be the actual URL to the server directory containing the files, and for the following lines, every even line number contains a relative path from the URL at line 1 to a file and every odd line number contains the respective file's hash. You can change this implementation adapting it to your own server metadata, or do the opposite.

3. Configure the Auto-Updater at your will

Edit any strings, configurations and the icon in ./GenericAutoUpdater/Resources/**/*
Edit the logo-image that is embedded in .GenericAutoUpdater/UI/Screens/PatcherMainWindow.resx

4. Build it with Visual Studio

Ctrl+Shift+B

5. Run the debugger or execute the executable file

./GenericAutoUpdater/bin/Debug/Generic Auto-Updater.exe

The Auto-Updater will start.

Running the tests

• You can run the tests with Test Explorer.
• Check this tutorial.

Built With

• .NET Framework 4.7.2 - The framework used;
• Visual Studio 2019 - IDE;
• Icon;
• Image.

Contributing

You can contribute by submitting a pull-request.

Versioning

For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.

Authors

• Igor Ruivo - Full stack - Igor Ruivo

See also the list of contributors who participated in this project.

generic-auto-updater's Issues

Auto Install .NET Framework

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Is not an problem on Windows 10 but when the users are using Windows xp and 7 the .NET Framework 4.7.2. is not installed by default.

Describe the solution you'd like
Auto Install of .NET Framework 4.7.2

Describe alternatives you've considered
Idk, at this moment I have no other idea.

Additional context
It is not necessary

Int32 value issue

Hi !
I try to use your updater which looks great.
I try it with a Unity build.

I did modifications as explain in your Installing process, I made metadata text file with url, name and hash. I put my build folder and text file on a Google Drive.
But when I run program, I have an unkown error "Value was too big or too small for Int32" during Step 1, few seconds after running.

Do you have any idea where could be the issue ?

Thanks for your work !

Unable to find Webserver

Also getting hung up with an unable to find webserver issue even though the .txt file is accessible via web-browser.

Download Error

I get this error when the auto updater is running:

This is the main url: http://pipiasibogdan.ovh/patchlist.txt

Security Question

Is not more secured if you use sha3-512 instead of md5?
Here is the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Comparison_of_SHA_functions

dotnet core port

I had tried to submit an issue asking this but it dissolved into to the ether, if they both hit you sorry.

I recently did a port to dotnet core here, https://github.com/fireball87/generic-auto-updater . My methodology was to move all of the standard logic into a .net standard library, and share that between a net47 and netcore app, so you can edit the resource files in the library and then build either version. I was just curious if this was anything you were interested in so I should clean up ask questions and attempt a pull request, or if it's something I should just maintain for myself. My next task will probably be creating a non winforms ui port (probably using a console library for the time being) that can be used on non windows systems.

Malicious file

Sadly this cannot really be used because Windows defender and many other anti virus programs see this as malware and will remove / block it. :(

You can build the solution and upload it to VirusTotal to see how many anti virus programs see this as malicious.
I use Eset Nod32 and it did not have a problem with the file, but once i started to send it to others the program was blocked everywhere even Google blocked it on my Drive.

Download error

I'm getting a network error.
Couldn't connect to the Auto-Updater server. Please check if the website is online or check your internet connection.

However, it does download, but only one file at a time.

my metadata location is this:
https://neo-tool.net/update-metadata.txt

Hash generator

Hi

Sorry this might be a very dumb question, but i've never played around with Md5 or hashes whatever its called.
What can i use to generator that txt file with the files names and hashes so that it looks like your example?

like:
filename1
hash
filename2
hash

and also files that are in directories
like:
/folder/filename1
hash

thanks for the awesome updater and any help will be much appreciated!